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SCHENCK HOMESTEAD
BUILT IN 1656 AND REPUTED TO BE THE OLDEST HOUSE IN NEW YORK STATE
Captain John SCHENCK, years before Jamaica Bay was even thought
of as a terminal for ocean liners, built SCHENCK Wharf on the end of
Mill Island, and personally carried on the larger part of the
shipping between the New and the Old Netherlands. The oldest
people of Flatlands and Bergen Beach have told many a tale concerning this
same Captain SCHENCK, and added that he was at one time a lieutenant
of Captain KIDD. Somebody. once called the house itself
"the pirate house." How it got this name or why is not known, as no
member of the SCHENCK family appears to have followed this calling,
and no tales of Captain KIDD and his many and varied treasures seem
to be connected with the place. It is a great wonder, however, owing
to the convenience of its location, that the notorious KIDD never
visited it.
For more than two centuries and a half this picturesque little
house has stood on what was formerly Mill Island and is now Bergen Beach.
Jaques MARTENSE SCHENCK Van NYDECK, of noble lineage, bom in Amersfoort,
Holland, emigrated to America and built this house in 1656. After
the property came into the possession of a descendant, Captain John
SCHENCK, it consisted of about seventy-five acres. of woodland, upland,
and salt marsh. Those who inherited the estate from Captain SCHENCK sold
it to Joris MARTENSE-, of Flatbush, for L32,500. The new owner,
while apparently not swerving from his allegiance to the king, during
the War of the Revolution gave generously toward the. Patriot cause,-
in all, about $5,500.. In this house Captain William MARRENER
(when he made his famous midnight expedition through Flatbush)
captured Major MONCRIEF of the British army.
From the MARTENSE family the property passed into the hands of
General Philip S. CROOKE, and was finally bought and is still owned
by the Atlantic, Gulf & Pacific Company.
It has changed little during the nearly three hundred years of
its life. The massive fireplace still stands in the living-room,
and the old beams, taken from the hull pf a ship wrecked years
ago in a great storm on the shore, are in a state of fine preservation.
The creek that formerly separated the house from the mainland was
filled in long ago. Ivy clambers over the walls of the homestead,
and trees shade its low porch, from which may be seen a queer little
mill, called GERRITSON'S Mill, resting for two centuries on the edge
of Strome Kil, or GERRITSON'S Creek, or the Mill Pond, as it has been
called. They say that, when the redcoats were hastening on their way
over Long Island, the thrifty Dutch Patriots sold them flour at the
mill for a dollar a pound. A little stream still gurgles and chatters
drowsily by the old mill, in sight of the porch of the SCHENCK homestead;
and not far away from it are the golf links of Harry Payne WHITNEY.
A Flatbush Avenue car will take the antiquary to the SCHENCK homestead
and the sleepy little stream that flows by the mill.
Bergen House
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