HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 327

he subsequent fate of the records themselves is, to this day, unknown.1

Gradually, under the benign influences of Liberty and Law, order emerged from chaos. The few lawless miscreants who remained were speedily restrained from their mischievous propensities by the whipping-post and imprisonment, angry passions subsided, and those citizens who had hitherto viewed each other as enemies, became united.

INCIDENTS.

From the MSS. of the late General Jeremiah Johnson, we have selected the following incidents illustrative of the British occupation of Brooklyn:

A REBEL-SHOT.—“In the summer of the year 1780, four British officers, who were in quarters in the Wallabout, were engaged in target-shooting in my father’s orchard. They were provided with a chair to sit on, and a rest for their guns; their target was placed against a large chestnut-tree, on the margin of a hill, some eighty yards off, and a servant was stationed below the ridge, with a staff, to designate the place on the target where their balls struck. They

1 “This was John Rapalje, mentioned (on pp. 78, 79, and 312) as a prominent citizen and Tory, who had been employed by Mr. Lefferts as a clerk, and therefore knew which of the records were most valuable. He came to the house one day, and telling Mrs. Lefferts that he intended removing the papers to a safe place, went into the room used as an office, and there busied himself for some time, selecting what he pleased, packing the whole in a sack, and taking them away.—(J. C. Brevoort, Esq., on authority of Leffert Lefferts, son of Leffert Lefferts, the clerk in question.) These records and papers were taken to England by Rapalje, in October, 1776 ; and his lands were confiscated, and afterwards became the property of J. & C. Sands. After his death, the papers fell into the possession of his grand_daughter, who married William Weldon, of Norwich, County of Norfolk, England. William Weldon and his wife came to New York about the year 1810, to recover the estates of John Rapalje, and employed D. B. Ogden and Aaron Burr as counsel, who advised them that the Act of Attainder, passed by the Legislature against Rapalje and others, barred their claim. Weldon and his wife brought over with them the lost records of the town of Brooklyn, and offered them to the town for a large sum (according to some, $10,000), but would not even allow them to be examined before delivery. Although a writ of replevin might easily have secured them to the town again, the apathetic Dutchmen of that day were too indifferent to the value of these records, and they were allowed to return to England.”(MS. Note of Jeremiah Johnson.)