HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 305

tion of which was built by Mr. Livingston, just previously to the war, for his only son, who was then making the tour of Europe, and was to be married on his return, which, however, was prevented by his death abroad. The house was constructed in the very best manner, having costly carved marble mantels imported from Italy, and other furniture at that day unusual to American houses. During the occupation of the island it was used as an hospital for the British navy,1 probably as a justifiable retaliation upon its owner, who was a prominent member of the Continental Congress. Attached to the house was an extensive garden, which the well-known taste and abundant means of Mr. Livingston had made the finest in this part of America, and whichto their credit be it said—was kept in good repair by the physicians and officers of the hospital, who appropriated the mansion-house to their own use, sheds and huts being erected for the sick on the farm (formerly known as the Ralph Patchen property) on the southerly side of the present Atlantic street. Things remained thus until 1780-81, when Admiral Arbuthnot2 assumed the command of this station. He instituted various reforms, among which was the turning out of the surgeons and physicians from their comfortable quarters in the mansion-house, which was forthwith appropriated to

at “The Fishing Place.” This spot, famous in the memories of old Brooklynites, lay opposite the Livingston farms, between Cornell's Mills and the Remsen Farm, and was called “Livingston Beach.”

1 Furman, MSS., vol. ix. pp. 184, 185: “Dec. 9, 1839. My father tells me that at one period during the Revolutionary War he saw lying in the harbor of New York, when that city and Long Island were in the possession of the British army, eighteen line-of-battle ships and a great number of frigates and smaller vessels of war, with between eighty and ninety transports, belonging to the British navy.”

2 Admiral Arbuthnot was accompanied by Prince William, afterwards King William the Fourth, but then a midshipman in the Royal Navy. “The prince,” says Furman, MSS., “was very fond of playing a game of ball called ‘rackets,’ and used to go very frequently with officers of the British army and navy; and when they came to the ‘alley,’ which was in John street, New York, and found the young men and apprentices of the city playing, they, without any ceremony, would order them to discontinue and to leave the alley. This, of course, caused bad feeling on the part of the citizens towards the officers, which the former sought every opportunity of manifesting when they could do so with impunity. Thus James West, an apprentice of my father’s Uncle, James Hallett, a coachmaker in the city of New York (who established the first carriages for hire in that city, afterwards known an ‘hacks’), considering himself insulted or wronged by Prince William in some matter about that ball-play, one night gave the prince a good knock-down in the street, and a friend with him. did the same