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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