Crisis Decade (1850 – 1860)

…4: Lesson 13 A generation of Brooklyn industrialists, including the Pierrepont and Havemeyer families profited from the nation’s sweet tooth. In 1807, William Havemeyer, a German immigrant, opened a sugar refining business in Manhattan. Sugar was still a luxury commodity enjoyed by the city’s elite. By 1857, changes in technology allowed sugar to be cheaply produced. The Havemeyers relocated their business to Williamsburg, where they began to st…

Timeline

…ea traveled as a preacher across the United States, West Indies, and Europe and shared the Gospel and his life story with audiences. He detailed his experiences in the Life, History, and Unparalleled Suffering of John Jea, the African Preacher (1811). His autobiography offers a rare glimpse into the brutality of slavery in Brooklyn from the perspective of an enslaved person. * Jea states that his slaveholders were Oliver and Anjelika Treibuen in…

Abolitionist Brooklyn (1828 – 1849)

Land speculation led to Brooklyn’s rapid urban transformation in the early nineteenth century. Following the Anti-Abolition Riot in Manhattan (1834), white abolitionists moved to the emerging city. While they focused on building a national campaign, black Brooklynites sustained the city’s anti-slavery movement by continuing to build strong communities. By 1834, Brooklyn evolved from Manhattan’s agricultural neighbor to a flourishing urban center…

A Gradual Emancipation (1783 – 1827)

…ery sentiment grew in the early republic. Many enslaved people of African descent and white Quakers used the rhetoric of the Revolutionary War to demand civil rights and broaden the ideology of freedom. As a result, manumissions, anti-slavery societies and free black communities expanded across the North. The constitutions of Vermont (1777) and Massachusetts (1783) forbade slavery, and Pennsylvania (1780) Rhode Island (1784), and Connecticut (178…

Abolitionist Biographies

…and reported from the black state and national conventions that met annually during the antebellum decades. His tone and style were typified by irreverence, humor and satire. He was a member of the Committee of Thirteen, a vigilance committee also opposed to emigration. The organization formed some time after 1850 and attracted other Brooklynites Junius C. Morel, John N. Still, and a number of other anti-slavery activists from New York. Towards t…

Glossary

…s A group of united southern states that formed the Confederate States of America, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. These states voted to secede from the United States between 1860 and 1861. Draft A system for selecting individuals from a group for military service. Emancipation A system under which people are treated as property, to be bought an…

Games

…s. James Hamlet Williamsburg resident, James Hamlet, was kidnapped and accused of being a fugitive who ran away from his enslaver Mary Brown in Baltimore. Manhattan and Brooklyn abolitionists rallied together to raise the $800 needed for Hamlet’s release. The Freedman’s Bureau After the Civil War, Congress established the Freedman’s Bureau.The Brooklyn Branch, which opened in 1866, assists, educates, and aids free people living in Brooklyn. Peter…

Walking Tours

…rification and a changing waterfront that mix remnants of its industrial past with modern luxury condos. But in 1838, Williamsburg was merely a village or small independent town within Bushwick (one of six towns in Kings County). It quickly transformed from a village to a town to a city before it was finally absorbed by Brooklyn in 1855. During this growth, it was home to a number of German immigrants and the second largest African American commu…