HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 363

For several years after the close of the Revolution, the bones of those who died on board the prison-ships were to be seen, scarce earthed in the falling banks of the Wallabout, or strewn upon its shores, and bleaching beneath the winter's storm and the summer’s scorching sun. And though, during this period, several patriotic individuals called the attention of Congress and of the public to these exposed and neglected remains,1 yet no formal movement seems to have been made towards their proper interment until 1792, when the citizens of the town of Brooklyn, at an annual town meeting, resolved that the bones disinterred and collected by Mr. John Jackson2 (who had recently become the owner of the ÒRemsen

1 Among others, Joseph P. Cook, a member (from Connecticut) of Congress then in session in New York, writing under date of June 3d, 1785, from his lodgings in Brooklyn, near the Wallabout, says: “Soon after we came to live on Long Island, several of us took a walk that way, and were struck with horror at beholding a large number of human bones, some fragments of flesh not quite consumed, with many pieces of old blankets, lying upon the shore. In consequence of a representation made to Congress, they were soon after taken up and buried. But walking along the same place, not many days ago, we saw a number more which were washed out; and attempting to bury them ourselves, we found the bank full of them.”

2 John Jackson, a native of Jerusalem, Queens County, L. I., removed with his brothers, Samuel and Treadwell, to the village of Brooklyn, shortly after the close of the Revolution. It is probable that the brothers were possessed of some means, for they soon purchased large estates in Brooklyn, which could, at that early period, be had at very low prices. John Jackson, about 1791, purchased the large and valuable farm then known as the “Remsen estate,” situated on the Wallabout, and comprising about thirty acres of land and thirty-five acres of pond, together with the old mill and dwelling-house—for which he paid the sum of $17,000. It was in making improvements on this farm that public attention seems first to have been attracted, by the disinterment of the remains of those buried from the prison-shipsÑlarge quantities of bones being found in cutting away the high banks, which then formed the shore of the bay. In the year 1801, Mr. Jackson sold to the United States forty acres of this property, which has ever since been occupied by the Government as a navy-yard. In other instances than this, also, Mr. Jackson appears in Brooklyn history mostly in the character of a shrewd speculatorÑas the originator and President of the Wallabout Bridge Company—as the builder of a saw-mill on the adjoining meadow, to be moved by wind, which failedÑas the vendor of a part of the same meadow (to Captain Isaac Chauncey, of the U. S. N.), for the purpose of erecting thereon powder magazines; but the dampness of the place damaged the powder, and, consequently, the reputation of the magazines. Indeed, in his sale of land and water privilege to the United States for a navy-yard, he seems to have granted rather more of the mill_stream, than his own title fairly included, and to have covered the excess by an ambiguously worded deed, which ultimately gave rise to some well-founded complaint on the part of the citizens Of the town—to which the said water privilege belonged—and to an extensive cor respondence between them and the Secretary of the Navy. Mr. Jackson is described,