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History of Bushwick
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The areas now called Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Bushwick (Community
Boards 1 and 4) were originally one Dutch settlement, the Town of
Bushwick. The land was purchased from the Canarsee Indians in 1638
and officially chartered by Governor Peter Stuyvesant in 1660. He
also gave it the name of Boswyck (refuge or town in the woods).
The early settlers were Dutch, French, Scandinavians, and English
farmers from the Plymouth Colony. They and their descendants for the
next two centuries produced tobacco and food for themselves and the
New York market, using their own and slave labor until 1827. (Kings
County was the largest slave holding county in the north).
Dutch was the daily language until the 19th century. From
1758 to 1800, Dutch and English were taught in the schools and then
English was taught exclusively. (Bilingualism is not a new issue in
New York life).
Present day Bushwick, just one small part of the Town of Bushwick, was
for a long time a jointly owned woodland used for grazing animals and
gathering firewood. The road to the woods ran parallel to today’s
Bushwick Avenue.
The area closest to the East River, today’s Williamsburg, developed
early, while Bushwick remained rural until the 1850’s. The entire
area was then mapped by a descendant of the original Lefferts and
Suydam families and sold for homes. The former Town of Bushwick
merged with the City of Brooklyn in 1855 and from then on the
population doubled and tripled every 20 years. Shipping and ship
construction, oil, ironworks, pottery, clothing, printing, and every
type of industry flourished along the waterfront.
About this period, over a million Germans and Austrians came to the
United States, many settling in northern Brooklyn and creating an
important “Little Germany”. They opened breweries, beer halls and
restaurants (to encourage beer consumption), organized singing
societies, and built many Lutheran and Catholic churches. St.
Barbara’s, a magnificent Baroque building on Central Avenue, is the
most outstanding example of the brewers largesse. In 1880 there were
11 breweries in Bushwick and Williamsburg, and in 1904 there were 44.
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