78 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

up to line, probably, of Fulton street; and previous to the Revolutionary War were owned by John Rapalje, a great-great-grandson of the first settler. Mr. Rapalje was a person of considerable importance, was the owner of the largest estate in Brooklyn, had occupied, at one time, a seat in the Provincial Assembly, and enjoyed the highest confidence and respect of his fellow-citizens. Upon the breaking out of the Revolution, the family adhered to the British cause, in consequence of which a bill of attainder was passed against him, October 27, 1779, and he was banished to New Jersey. After the occupation of Long Island by the British, he returned to Brooklyn, and there remained with his family until October, 1783, when, in company with his son, his son-in-law, Colonel Lutwyche, and a grand-daughter, he removed to England, and settled at Norwich, in the County of Norfolk. All efforts to procure a reversion of his attainder, and the restoration of his confiscated estates in America, having failed, his losses were reimbursed to him by the British government, and he died at Kensington, in his seventy-fourth year, January 12, 1802. Loyalist as he was, it was often said of him by his old neighbors of Brooklyn, that “he had an honest heart, and never wronged or oppressed a Whig or other man.”1

His hands and other property, in various parts of Brooklyn, having been confiscated to the people of the State, were sold by the Commissioners of Forfeited Estates.2 That portion under consideration, lying between Gold and Fulton streets, was purchased, on the 13th of July, 1784, by Comfort and Joshua Sands, for the sum of £12,430, paid in State scrip.3 Some ten or twelve years after the

1 See genealogy Remsen family, in Riker’s Hist. Newtown, 385; Holgate’s American Genealogies, 20.

2 Liber 6, Conveyances, p. 345, Kings Co.

3 Described as “all that certain farm or parcel of land and the several dwellinghouses, buildings, barns, stables, and other improvements thereon erected, and being late the property of John Rapalje, Esq., situate, lying, and being in the township of Brooklyn, Kings County, and State of New York; bounded, southerly, partly by the highway leading from Brooklyn ferry and partly by the lots of Jacob Sharpe and others; easterly, by the land of Matthew Gleaves (the Tillary parcel on our map), and the lands now or late belonging to the estate of Barent Johnson, deceased; northerly, by the land of Item Remsen; and westerly, by the East River; containing 160 acres,” etc.—Lib. VI., Conveyances Kings Co., p. 345. The land at this time was unfenced, the title deeds were in Rapalje’s possession, and unrecorded, and the boundaries of his lands were given by the Commissioners from common report.