Weeksville, Brooklyn
|
Hunterfly Road Historic District
|
|
Hunterfly Road House, August 2009
|
|
 |
|
| Location | 1698, 1700, 1702, 1704, 1706, 1708 Bergen St., New York, New York |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 40°40′29″N 73°55′33″W / 40.67472°N 73.92583°WCoordinates: 40°40′29″N 73°55′33″W / 40.67472°N 73.92583°W |
| Area | 2 acres (0.81 ha) |
| Built | 1830 |
| Architectural style | a |
| NRHP Reference # | |
| Added to NRHP | December 5, 1972 |
Weeksville is a neighborhood founded by African American freedmen in what is now Brooklyn, New York, United States, part of the present-day neighborhood of Crown Heights.
Weeksville was named after James Weeks, a stevedore and African-American ex-slave from Virginia, who in 1838 (just 11 years after the abolition of slavery in New York State) bought a plot of land from Henry C. Thompson, a free African-American and land investor, in the Ninth Ward of central Brooklyn. Thompson had acquired the land from Edward Copeland, a politically minded European American and Brooklyn grocer, in 1835.Previously Copeland bought the land from an heir of John Lefferts, a member of one of the most prominent and land-holding families in Brooklyn. There was ample opportunity for land acquisition during this time, as many prominent land-holding families sold off their properties during an intense era of land speculation. Many African Americans saw land acquisition as their opportunity to gain economic and political freedom by building their own communities. The City of New York confuses Weeks with a man of the same name who lived 1776-1863.
The village itself was established by a group of African-American land investors and political activists, and covered an area in the borough's eastern Bedford Hills area, bounded by present-day Fulton Street, East New York Avenue, Ralph Avenue and Troy Avenue. A 1906 article in the New York Age recalling the earlier period noted that James Weeks "owned a handsome dwelling at Schenectady and Atlantic Avenues."
By the 1850s, Weeksville had more than 500 residents from all over the East Coast (as well as two people born in Africa). Almost 40 percent of residents were southern-born. Nearly one-third of the men over 21 owned land; in antebellum New York, unlike in New England, non-white men had to own real property (to the value of $250) and pay taxes on it to qualify as voters. The village had its own churches (including Bethel Tabernacle African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Berean Missionary Baptist Church), a school ("Colored School no. 2", now P.S. 243), a cemetery, and an old age home. Weeksville had one of the first African-American newspapers, the Freedman's Torchlight, and in the 1860s became the national headquarters of the African Civilization Society and the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum. In addition, the Colored School was the first such school in the U.S. to integrate both its staff and its students.
...
Wikipedia