Re: John Ryerson Home in Brooklyn Torn down
-
In reply to:
Re: John Ryerson Home in Brooklyn Torn down
3/05/01
Digby courierDigby NSMarch13 1896
A Mansion Of The Colonal Style That Belongs To A Family With Members Now Resident in Bear River.
The Ryersons of Bear River who have a large family connection in that place and vicinity,trace their genealogy back to New England pioneers of nearly two centuries ago.Such family history is always sure to have in it very many interesting points and the pride that has its birth in old colonial ancestry is to a great degree justifiable.
One of the fathers of the Ryerson family was the originalowner of a huge old dwelling-house in Brooklyn,N.Y. now being torn down to give place to new buildings.A recent number of the New York Sun has an article in reference to it that apart from its interest to our Bear River readers is of general interest as a description of a typical old style residence. We give a few extracts.
The old Ryerson residence cottage has been a familar landmark in Brooklyn for very many years. The house has a history and many thrilling stories are told as to the scenes it has passed through.When it was built by James Ryerson, about the year 1730, that family was among the wealthiest of the early Dutch settlers of Long Island. They owned many acres of land and their possesions were touched on one side by the sea and on the other side by the old flushing road , a track a mile wide. The house was surrounded by a flower garden and had a lovely view toward the river.
The mansion was the residence of several generations of Ryersons and early in its history was the scene of the suicide of a farm hand who died for the love of a milk maid. When the growing city of Brooklyn reached this neighbourhood the Ryersons abandoned the house as a residence. Then began its many vicissitudes of fortune.
About sixty years ago , the place fell into the hands of a Scotchman who turned it into a tavern and called it the "Tam O' Shanter ".It became the resort of gamblers and two or three drunken murders added to the ghosts who tenanted the old house.Then a Englishman succeded to the property and he also kept it as a sportingresort. The reputation of the old house went from bad to worst. An Irishman, O'Reilly ran it about forty years ago as a low tavern with two more murders under his regime. After thatthe bad name of the old mansion as a haunted house kept people away from it. It was deserted for a long time . In 1867 the house , then falling into pictureque decay was purchased by Henry Mooney.
This old Ryerson cottage is like other old Dutch farmhouses which we may occasionally see in some of the old Long Island villages. It was originallyone story high with a big attic and a long sloping roof ending at the front and back in a wide piazza.The front andsides of the house are covered withheavy , flat , pine shingles , two feet long and half an inch thick and still sturdy and strong.The bricks of the big chimney came over from Holland and are much smaller than the modern kind.They are as hard as iron and the mortar turns the steel point of a pick axe to break it
The great beams of the floor and roof and the studding of the walls are made from heavy timber all hewn by hand from trees felled in the virgin forests of the new world.There is a sturdy honesty about all the workmanship that shows the house was put up to stay.Moreover the thickness of the walls would indicate that its owner expected to make his house his castle in more sense than one. For there were hostile Indians in those days and the isolated farmhouses might have to be suddenly transformed into a fortress to defend the settler from Massacre.
In tearing down the venerable relic much curious rubbish was discovered in the attic and cellar. A rust-eaten horse pistol , two feet long , with a flint lock was found in a hiding place in the wall. A few English copper pennies were found under the floors and under the roof , a heavy cavalry sabre of English make.