HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 215

but so narrow as hardly to lead one to suppose that it was a street. The “swinging gate” here referred to was on the east side of the present Fulton street, about where Sands street now enters, and there commenced the four-foot road. On Ratzer's map, prepared in 1766-7, this road is laid down, with the buildings thereon, showing conclusively that it was then the same as Fulton street before the widening in 1839.

For the few remaining incidents of interest in the history of the town, previous to the Revolutionary period, we are indebted mainly to the New York newspapers of the day.

1732, March 27. The New York Gazette contains an advertisement by Edward Willett, offering to sell, on reasonable terms, a very good negro woman, aged twenty-seven, with two fine children. She is described as understanding all sorts of business in city or country, and speaks very good English and Dutch.

1732, July 17. Edward Willett advertises for sale the laxge, wellfurnished house where Mr. James Harding lately lived, near the ferry, at Brooklyn, finely situated for a gentleman and a countryseat, or a public house. With it was also a “large barn, well covered with cedar;1 a large, handsome garden; and ten acres of good land, in a fine young orchard.”

Brooklyn’s relative population in 1738, as compared with the other Kings County towns, is exhibited in the following table:

Total of Whites, 1,784. Total of Blacks, 564.
PETER STRYCKER, Junr Sheriff.2

1 Dwellings and barns were, at this period, very generally covered with straw thatch.

2 N. Y. Col. MSS., lxxii. 31.