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
On Saturday March 14, 1885, workers at Finlay's Stores were told that they hourly rate would be cut to 20 cents an hour, down from twenty-five. They refused to work for less pay and the company replaced them with about fifty Swedes and Norwegians....
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Construction of The Atlantic Dock - a massive, man-made harbor for deep water ships, began on June 3, 1841. The erection of stout stone warehouses and towering grain elevators that could handle products coming down the Erie Canal began in...
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 Until it was repealed in 1943, Chinese sailors were not allowed ashore.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....
