326 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

close of this year’s campaign, De Heister, the Hessian general, returned to Europe with a ship-load of plundered property. During the next year (1777), the farmers had cultivated but little more than a bare sufficiency for their own subsistence, and even that was frequently stolen or destroyed. Stock became very scarce and dear, and the farmer of Brooklyn who owned a pair of horses and two or three cows, was “well of.” The scarcity prevailing in the markets, however, soon rendered it necessary for the British commanders to restrain this system of indiscriminate marauding, and to encourage agriculture. After the capture of General Burgoyne's army, rebel prisoners were treated with more lenity; and in 1778, the towns of Flatbush, Flatlands, Gravesend, and New Utrecht were set apart as a parole-ground, for the purpose of quartering American officers whom the fortunes of war had thrown upon their hands. In these towns, therefore, a greater degree of peace and order prevailed, and the farmers had the twofold advantage of receiving high prices for their produce and pay for boarding the prisoners. Brooklyn, however, remained a garrison town until the peace, and many farms were not inclosed until after the evacuation, in 1783.

When, therefore, the inhabitants returned to their desolated and long-deserted homes, their first efforts were directed to the cultivation of their lands, the re-establishment of their farm boundaries, and the restoration of their private affairs. This being accomplished, their attention was next turned to the reorganization of the town-whose records had been removed, and whose functions and privileges had been totally suspended during the seven yearsÕ military occupation by the British. On the first Tuesday of April, 1784, was held the first town-meeting since April, 1776. Jacob Sharpe, Esq., was chosen Town Clerk, and applied to Leffert Lefferts, Esq., the previous clerk, for the town records. Lefferts deposed, on oath, that they had been removed from his custody, during the war, by a person or persons to him unknown; and although that person has since been identified,

a soldier while sitting in her window; three men of the 33d Regiment (under Colonel Webster, quartered at Lambert Suydam’s) had killed one of his cattle and were skinning it, when he shot the three with one discharge of buckshot; two were killed in Bushwick; three in Newtown; one killed at a shanty, by a man named Cypher, near the Half-way House.”—Jeremiah Johnson.