(Photograph by John L. Pierrepont in the collection of the Long Island Historical Society)
Now the Brooklyn Historical Society)
http://brooklynhistory.org/library_collections.html

http://www.prospectpark.org/hist/archives.html#about

Old Stone House..
The Old Stone House is now an Historic Interpretive Center in J.J. Byrne Park.

THE BATTLE AT THE OLD STONE HOUSE AT GOWANUS


  "We shall have with you'in a few days four thousand men, which is all that 
we can arm and equip, and die people of New York, for whom we have great affection, 
can have no more than our all."
-Maryland Council of Safety to the New York delegates in Congress, 
August 16, I776; concerning the .American troops that fought 
at the Stone House of Gowanus.

	Maryland soldiers under Lord Stirling fought and died around 
the Stone House at Gowanus on the day when the first real battle of the 
Revolution occurred, August 27, 1776. On the preceding day General Washington 
had viewed the works of defence nearest the British lines.  It is altogether 
possible that he came to the Old Stone House, and that he surveyed
the slopes of Gowanus, anxiously scanning them, seriously considering 
the situation. It is reported that he was "very anxious" on the' night 
preceding the battle of Long Island, that a premonition came to him 
of an attack both by land and by sea, and that after much restless tossing 
he finally affirmed that "the same Providence that rules to-day 
will rule to-morrow," and fell asleep."
	
	Of the morrow many tales are told, tales of the battle of Brooklyn
and of this old house that felt the shock of cannon and saw brave men die.
	
	The Stone House at Gowanus no longer stands. Tenements have been built 
over the lands that formerly spread around it; and on the wall of one of them, 
located on the north-west corner of Fifth Avenue and Third Street,
is a bronze tablet, depicting the scene of that eventful battle, when 
scores of Maryland's sons fell. "The site," one reads beneath the 
battle-scene, "of the Old CORTELYOU House on the Battlefield of Long Island. 
Here on the 27th of August, 1776, two hundred and fifty out of four hundred 
brave Maryland soldiers under the command of Lord Stirling were 
killed in combat with the British under Lord Cornwallis."
		
	This Old Stone House, which years after its erection came to play such a 
prominent part in the' history of Long Island, was erected by Nicholas VECHTE 
in 1699, and historians say it was the only stone house in Gowanus at 
the time he built it. Well built, with walls several
feet thick, it withstood this terrific siege in the War of the Revolution,
and, tnen finally destroyed several years ago, Gatling guns were
necessary to force apart the stones of the structure. At the time
Nicholas VECHTE built it, momentous events were coming to pass;
and the very year of its erection the notorious Captain Kidd sailed
to Easthampton, Long Island, and buried treasure there.
	
	Stirling set out from the Stone House at three o'clock on the 
morning of the 27th to face the British. He advanced along Fifth Avenue,
past Greenwood (Lookout) Hill, to meet the enemy, who had several
days before landed at Gravesend and Fort Hamilton. The British
in the mean time were directing their lines against the Stone House. 
The detachments met in the early morning near the border of Greenwood Woods. 
Washington and the people of Brooklyn had been aroused by the rattle of 
musketry. General Washington was in his saddle at dawn, hastening toward 
the Brooklyn lines, where he beheld the slaughter of Lord Stirling's men, 
fighting against Cornwallis. At that moment there was being fought what 
John Fiske calls the first real battle of the Revolution, beginning with 
an engagement between Grant and Stirling at Greenwood and concluding 
with that between Cornwallis and Stirling at the Old Stone House of Gowanus.
	
	Hour after hour the storm of fire from cannon, muskets, and rifles
continued between Grant and Stirling. The patriot general held his own 
until word reached him that Sullivan had fallen and been made a prisoner 
by the Hessians, while the British army was advancing on his rear. The 
Old Stone House was occupied by Cornwallis and his troops. Taking a 
chance in a thousand of saving himself and his men, Stirling directed 
his forces toward routing the British general. Time and again the brave 
Americans stormed the house; and, though guns had been placed both within 
the house and without, with each charge the enemy fell back. Victory seemed
inevitable for Stirling, but just at the turn in his favor Cornwallis
received reinforcements. Stirling knew that escape was impossib1e,
for every way had been closed. Signalling for six companies of a
Maryland regiment of riflemen to join him, he once more turned on the 
British, and with his men faced the rain of English bullets until two hundred 
and fifty-six of the Marylanders were dead. Then Lord Stirling blindly fled 
across the hills, where, refusing to surrender to a British general, he 
sought out in Prospect Woods. the Hessian general, De Heister, and was sent
a prisoner to the Bntlsh flagship Eagle, with other prisoners of war.
	
	Darkness fell on the ill-fated August 27. Rain and fog set in and
General Washington, fearing that the British fleet would sail up the East 
River and cut off his forces on Long Island, resolved on a retreat.
Only the sound of the sentinel's footfall broke the stil1ness of the night.
At the foot of what is now Fulton Street, preparatIons were being made for 
embarking. Suddenly the hush of midnight was broken by the boom of a solitary cannon.
	
	"We are lost," said an aide to Washington.

	They tell a story of Mrs. John RAPELJE, whose husband was a notorious Royalist. 
From the gathering of boats on the shore and the unusual movements of the 
American troops, Mrs. RAPELJE surmised that they meant flight; and, summoning 
a negro slave, she sent him to inform Lord Howe of these facts. A Hessian 
sentinel stopped the slave, and, unable to understand his language, the sentinel 
detained him as a spy until morning, when only the empty entrenchments of the
patriots remained to tell of their escape.
	
	Four years later Nicholas VECHTE moved from his substantial stone house, 
having sold the Gowanus estate to Jaques CORTELYOU, by whose name the house 
has very frequently been called.



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