24 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

Utrecht line—may be considered as the first step in the settlement of the City of Brooklyn. The second step, according to the best documentary evidence, was taken about a year later, by JOHN (GEORGE) JANSEN de RAPALIE, one of the Walloon emigrants of 1623, who first settled at Fort Orange (Albany), and in 1626 removed to New Amsterdam, on Manhattan Island. On the 16th of June, 1637, Rapalie purchased from its native proprietors a piece of land called “Rennegackonk,”1 lying on Long Island “in the bend of Marechkawieck,”2 now better known as Wallabout Bay. This purchase, comprising about three hundred and thirty-five acres, now occupied in part by the grounds of the United States Marine Hospital, and by that portion of the city between Nostrand and Grand Avenues although it may have been, and probably was, more or less improved as a farm by Rapalie-was not occupied by him as a residence until about 1654.3 By that time, the gradual influx of other settlers, many of whom were Walloons, had gained for the neighborhood the appellation of the “Waal-Bogt,” or “the bay of the foreigners.”4 Thus, at two isolated points-offering to the

1. “Rennegackonck” (sometimes spelt with an i or a u in the first syllable) is a small creek or stream of water emptying into the Wallabout Bay.

2. The Indian name of tile territory of Brooklyn was Meryckawick or “the sandy place” from me, the article in the Algonquin dialect, reckwa, sand, and ick, locality. The Dame was probably applied, at first, to the bottom-land, or beach; and what is now Wallabout Bay, was formerly called “The boght of Mareckawick.” O’Callaghan supposes that the Indians who inhabited that part of the present city of Brooklyn derived their tribal name from the bay; but we are inclined to the opinion that the appellation was by no means so limited, for the present name of Rockaway, in another part of the county, seems to have the same derivation.

4. The earliest date at which the word “Waal-bogt” (or “Wahle-Boght,” now corrupted to Wallabout) appears upon the colonial records, is in 1656, by which time a considerable number of Walloons and other foreign emigrants had become located there. In regard to the nationality of these settlers, Bergen (Hist. Bergen Family, 18, 19; Hist. Mag., vi. 162) says: "The Montfoorts and Huybertsen may have been Walloons; the name of Cornelissen indicates that he was a Netherlander; Picet or Piquet was from Rouen, in France, which is located many miles from the frontiers; * * Peter Caeser (Alburtus), as his name indicates, was an Italian; Hans Hansen Bergen was a Norwegian; and Rapalie could not have been a Walloon by birth, if, as asserted and claimed, he wits a native of Rochelle, in France, a seaport on the Bay of Biscay, several hundred miles from the frontiers of Belgium. All Huguerots in those days may, however, have been known by the general title of Walloons, and the settlement of emigrants of this elms at a later period in that vicinity, may account for the name; it being customary in Holland in those days to distinguish churches in their midst, erected by French Huguenots, by the name of ‘Waale Kerken’' or Walloon Churches.”