enter name and hit return
THE REMSEN PLACE
AND JANNETTE DE RAPELJE'S TRIP IN A TUB
The REMSEN house, on the corner of REMSEN Plate and Church
Avenue, was built long before the War of the Revolution, and it is
believed by members of the family that some REMSEN has lived in
it ever since Manhattan Island had its first Dutch goveror.
The first member of this distinguished family was Rem VAN DER BECK,
a blacksmith in early Brooklyn, who married Annette DE RAPELJE, about
whom the Canarsie Indian legend has come down, telling how, when Annette
was a little girl, a squaw bundled her into a tub and rowed her all the
way from Gowanus Island to Long Island, that the Indians might see
what a litte white girl looked like.
Brooklyn's history is closely associated with this family; which,
though never seeking office, always served the community in one way or
another. One Jacob REMSEN was the bell-ringer of the town when the first
bell was purchased for L49 4s., and people were deploring
the wasteful extravagance of it and of a fire-engine that some
progressive men of affairs had bought. More than twenty-six acres
of land south of Brooklyn Ferry, as Fulton Ferry was then known, came
into the posession of the REMSEN family on June 19, 1753, and cost them the
then snug sum of L1,060. About ten years later they sold
this land, and Henry and Peter REMSEN purchased all of the present
business section of the city. Their holdings have been recorded
as extending south to Red Hook Point and north to what is now
Livingston Street.
The progenitor of the REMSEN family, Rem Jansen VAN DER BECK,
died in 1681, leaving his wife Jannette and fifteen children, all
of whom have been recorded as married and attending his funeral.
He was esteemed as a citizen and a magistrate.
Hendrick L. Lott Homestead
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