By The Red Hook WaterStories team
December 5, 1860, the slave ship ERIE was sold at government auction in Atlantic Basin, Red Hook, Brooklyn. One month prior, the ship had been condemned and ordered to be sold by the United States District Court. This was news of national note...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Four years before the American Civil War, a legal battle emerged from a situation that occurred aboard a steamship from Savannah to New York. One of the passengers, Thomas Steele, a light skinned man, was accused of being a fugitive slave by another...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
A pivotal event in the ending of slavery occurred on December 5, 1860, in Atlantic Basin, Red Hook when the slave ship ERIE was sold at government auction. Its captain and owner, Nathaniel Gordon, was then executed for engaging in the slave...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The Brooklyn Bridge is a suspended by four main steel wire cables. It became the first major bridge of its kind when it opened for service in May 1883 and it's unique design remains essentially the same today. The concept of suspending a bridge with...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
D efalcation. John Wright, a storage keeper at Atlantic Docks, N.Y. and a defaulter to a considerable amount, left for France in the steamer United States, on her last passage. One house in New York, it is said, will be a loser by him to the...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States. Until it was repealed in 1943, Chinese sailors were not allowed ashore. Ships that let the sailors leave could be fined $500 per person....
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Charles Debois was charged, in 1859, with attacking Mary Ann Baker while she was sleeping in her winter home, a canal boat docked in Atlantic Basin. The greater charge of rape was dropped. Complete text of article: New York NY Evening Express...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
" Albert Anastasia and Dandy Jack Parisi were frequently seen in the union offices at 33 President Street, Brooklyn, associating with union officers. The so-called City Democratic Club, located in South Brooklyn, was a hangout for racketeers where...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Frank Schmidt, known to the police as "Dutch Frank," a junk dealer operating in and around Red Hook Point faced trial for dealing in stolen goods, October 1855. Junk dealers made their living buying spare sails, ropes and old iron from...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
A small blurb in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle , July 1852 paints an image of scrappy Red Hook. A man named Hayes, who keeps a junk store in Red Hook Point, was taken before Justice King this morning, on a charge preferred against him by David W. Sweet,...
