"You don't know what I mean about that job out there do you? I thought not. Well, it's this way. Down here in the towing, and ice and water supply business we have a great deal of competition. No, it is not friendly competition, I might almost say...
The Signal Success of Martha Coston, 1826-1904
“So little opportunity have women had hitherto for demonstrating their capability for business, that it can only be indicated by the success of some particular woman in some unusual and exceptional pursuit; and I know of no better illustration...
Heidi Benedikt, crew member of the MARY WHALEN, 1986-88: Oral History
Heidi Benedikt - part 1: audio element. Heidi Benedikt - part 2: audio element. Synopsis of interview with Heidi Benedikt, former crew member of the MARY A. WHALEN. Recording times in parenthesis are aproximate. (0:10) The delegate of the...
Stewardess & the Theft of Spanish Lace, 1896
One August day in 1896, on a steamship just arrived from Lisbon and docked in Erie Basin, custom officials found stashed in the cabin of a stewardess, four boxes of Spanish thread lace, one box of lace and lace embroidery as well as children's...
Canal Boat: Assault! 1859
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...
Inhabitants of the Squatter Camps Trying to Pull Through the Winter. 1933
The area between Erie Basin and Columbia Street was home to a makeshift shantytown community known as Tin City, made up largely of unemployed and under-employed maritime workers in the 1920s and 30s. In the winter of 1932, The New York Sun ...
Living in a Box; Three Women Find It Decidedly Enjoyable. 1891
Living on a canal boat traveling down the Erie Canal, to the Hudson River, to Red Hook, Brooklyn's Erie Basin was a job and a way of life for some people, but for three women from Brooklyn, in the summer of 1891, it was a great restful vacation. The...
Childhood's Happy Days Recalled by Mrs. Callahan, Red Hook's 'Oldest Resident’, 1950
In 1950, Mrs. Callahan, born in 1853 looked back at nearly 100 years of living in Red Hook. She remembered farm animals, the 'Meadows', streams, flooding and ice skating on a pond that formed where Coffey Park is now. ● … I was born in the old...
Lost Love Found: Immigration, Romance and the Atlantic Basin, 1913
When the Steamer Uranium, from Rotterdam, via Halifax docked at Atlantic Basin's Pier 38 in Red Hook, all the talk was about love. Love was what people were talking about when the Steamer Uranium docked at Pier 38, Atlantic Basin, Red Hook, in...
Outrageous: A narrow escape from slavery at Red Hook Point, 1850
In the summer of 1850, an African-American woman was abducted and brought to Red Hook Point - just below the Atlantic Dock - to be put on a schooner and brought to a Southern slave state. The captors told suspicious workers in the area that the...