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BUSHWICK TOWNSHIP
Four Villages
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In 1638, the Dutch West India Company secured a deed from the local Lenape people for the Bushwick area, and Peter Stuyvesant, chartered the area
in 1661, naming it "Boswijck," meaning "little town in the woods" or "Heavy Woods" in 17th Century Dutch[1]. [1] Its area included the modern day
communities of Bushwick, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint. Bushwick was the last of the original six Dutch towns of Brooklyn to be established within New
Netherland.
The community was settled, though unchartered, on February 16, 1660 on a plot of land between the Bushwick and Newtown Creeks[1] by fourteen
French and Huguenot settlers, a Dutch translator named Peter Jan De Witt[4], and Franciscus the Negro, one of the original eleven slaves brought to
New Netherland who had worked his way to freedom.[5][6]. The group centered their settlement around a church located near today's Bushwick and
Metropolitan Avenues. The major thoroughfare was Woodpoint road, which allowed farmers to bring their goods to the town dock. [2] This original
settlement came to be known as Het Dorp by the Dutch, and, later, Bushwick Green by the British.
At the turn of the 19th century, Bushwick consisted of four villages, Green Point, Bushwick Shore[7], later to be known as Williamsburg, Bushwick
Green, and Bushwick Crossroads, at the spot today's Bushwick Avenue turns southeast at Flushing Avenue.[8]. The English would take over the six
towns three years later and unite the towns under Kings County in 1683.
Bushwick's first major expansion occurred after it annexed The New Lots of Bushwick, a hilly upland originally claimed by the Native Americans in the
first treaties they signed with European colonists providing the settlers rights to the lowland on the water. After the second war between the natives and
the settlers broke out, the natives fled, leaving the area to be divided among the six towns in Kings County. Bushwick had the prime location to absorb
their new tract of land in a contiguous fashion. New Bushwick Lane (Evergreen Ave), a former native American trail, was a key thoroughfare to access
this new tract suitable mostly for potato and cabbage agriculture. [3] This area is bound roughly by Flushing Avenue to the north, and Evergreen
Cemetery to the south.
In the 1850s, the New Lots of Bushwick area began to develop. References to the town of Bowronville, a new neighborhood contained within the area
south of Lafayette Ave and Stanhope Street begin to appear dating to the 1850's.
Modern flood map showing historical
villages and modern thoroughfares
Land annexation
Modern flood map showing historical villages and modern thoroughfares
Bushwick's first major expansion occurred after it annexed The New Lots of Bushwick, a hilly upland
originally claimed by the Native Americans in the first treaties they signed with European colonists
providing the settlers rights to the lowland on the water. After the second war between the natives and the
settlers broke out, the natives fled, leaving the area to be divided among the six towns in Kings County.
Bushwick had the prime location to absorb their new tract of land in a contiguous fashion. New Bushwick
Lane (Evergreen Ave), a former native American trail, was a key thoroughfare to access this new tract
suitable mostly for potato and cabbage agriculture. [3] This area is bound roughly by Flushing Avenue to
the north, and Evergreen Cemetery to the south.
In the 1850s, the New Lots of Bushwick area began to develop. References to the town of Bowronville, a
new neighborhood contained within the area south of Lafayette Ave and Stanhope Street begin to appear
dating to the 1850's.