IS THIS THE SITE OF A MASS GRAVE? (1905)
This year will mark the 241st anniversary of the day that, in 1776, our gallant soldiers of the 1st Maryland Regiment “fell in combat” in Gowanus, Brooklyn.
While Washington’s troops were spiriting away towards the East River, soon to escape in a fog so dense that the British did not know it was happening, the Maryland soldiers were dying and being captured at the hands of the representatives of our former enemy, the British Army.
In the words of Walt Whitman, describing Washington as he watched the discomfiting scene through his telescope:
Now of the old war-days . . the defeat at Brooklyn;
Washington stands inside the lines . . he stands on the entrenched hills amid a crowd of officers,
His face is cold and damp . . . . he cannot repress the weeping drops . . . .
He lifts the glass perpetually to his eyes . . . . the color is blanched from his cheeks,
He sees the slaughter of the southern braves confided to him by their parents.
Ultimately,” according to the New York Times, “of the the original Maryland 400 muster, 96 returned, with only 35 fit for duty.”
The mass grave, consisting of six trenches in a former farm field, is located at what is now Third Avenue between 7th and 8th streets.
Before Third Avenue was widened in 1910, the site had been marked by a tablet that read: “Burial place of ye 256 Maryland soldiers who fell in ye combat at ye Cortelyou House on ye 27th day of August 1776.”
Today, the exact location is in question. The Brooklyn Preservation Council believes that it exists “a few dozen yards to the east of the intersection,” while others – particularly the entity that owns the concrete-covered lot surrounded by a chain-link fence, a company called Derby Textile Corporation, demur.
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