Old Roads from the Heart of New York; Journeys Today by Ways of Yesterday, Within Thirty Miles Around the Battery (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE JAMAICA AND JERICHO TURNPIKE ""TURNING toward the east, the early New Yorker began his jaunt by means of a ferry to Brooklyn, or Breuckland?broken land., When John Areson was the lessee, the charge of ferriage for a single person was eight stivers in wampum, or a silver two-pence; for each person in company, half that amount; after sunset, double the price; and for each horse or beast, one shilling if alone, and nine pence in company. Rip Van Dam took a lease of the ferry in 1698, for a period of seven years, to pay 165 pounds a year. During the period of the Revolution, the old ferry was run by Van Winkle and Bukett, who charged for ferriage six pence. At present let us pass through Brooklyn, for the greatest event in her history calls for a chapter alone?the Battle of Long Island. We will follow the great artery which led directly east into the island. One hundred and twenty-nine years ago it was declared in a town meeting of Jamaica that "no hogs shall be permitted to roam about the streets." By this act the people of that Long Island village were declaring themselves for civic improvement quite as forcibly as any present-day municipality when it demands improved traffic control and underground trolley wires. (The restraint of willful hogs was an advanced thought in that dayj Jamaica was progressive. Along with Brooklyn, it had deplored the conditions of travel on the island, and when, in the early eighteen-hun- dreds, the turnpike became popular in the United States, the Brooklyn and Jamaica Turnpike Company was formed, and it was only a short time before these toll-gate roads were running out from Jamaica like fingers from a hand. Most famous of all was the Jamaica and Jericho Turnpike, which still leads to the old Quaker settlements. (Jam...