The Battle of Brooklyn, 250 Years Later

By late morning on August 27, 1776, the American line had collapsed. Washington's army was retreating northwest toward the Gowanus marsh, trying to reach the fortifications in Brooklyn Heights. They were going to be slaughtered if someone did not slow the British down.

The Maryland 1st Regiment, about 400 men under Lord Stirling, turned around. They charged Cornwallis's position at the Cortelyou House, the building standing next to you now. They charged six times. They knew they were going to lose.

While the Maryland 1st Regiment fought, the rest of Washington's army waded through the salt marsh that is now the Gowanus Canal. Without the Maryland 1st Regiment, the army does not escape.

Of the 400 men who turned to fight, only around 10 made it back to American lines. 256 died on this ground. The rest were wounded or captured. From the high ground at Cobble Hill, Washington watched and said, "Good God, what brave fellows I must this day lose."

The 256 Maryland soldiers killed at the Old Stone House are believed to be buried here, in the lot at the corner of 3rd and 9th, adjacent to American Legion Post 1636 (the Michael A. Rawley Post). A New York State historic marker on the site explains the story.

The exact location of the grave has been debated for almost 250 years. A 2017 archaeological dig at a nearby site on 9th Street found no human remains, and historians now think the soldiers may have been buried in scattered locations across the area rather than in a single mass grave. The uncertainty is part of why this corner has mattered for so long: an unmarked place of rest, contested by time, defended by neighbors.

What is not in dispute is who has kept the memory alive on this corner. Post 1636 has tended this ground since 1962, holding a ceremony every August and fighting to keep the lot from being developed over. The Post and its members are the reason this story has not been forgotten.

The Gowanus Creek in 1776 was a salt marsh several hundred yards across in places, broken by tidal channels and soft mud that gave way under a man's weight. It was treacherous to cross on foot under any conditions, and conditions that afternoon were not good. While the Maryland 400 were dying at the Old Stone House, the rest of Washington's army was wading through this water, weighed down by muskets and packs, with British and Hessian fire at their backs. Some drowned. Most made it.

The Carroll Street Bridge sits roughly across the line they would have taken. What you see today as a canal is what remains of that marsh, narrowed and channeled by a century of industrial dredging and fill, but running along the same path.

Stand on the bridge a minute. Look north toward the downtown Brooklyn skyline. Further to the west of that skyline is the high ground the army was trying to reach. From here, they made it.

This corner used to be a steep, cone-shaped hill called Ponkiesberg, or Cobleshill, or just Cobble Hill. On top of the hill, in the summer of 1776, the American army built a fort. After the army retreated across the East River, the British cut down its top so the position could not be used to observe their headquarters in Brooklyn Heights. What remained was leveled in the 1830s, the dirt used to fill in the marshes you just walked across.

Its official name was Smith's Barbette, after Captain William Smith, the army engineer who built it. British soldiers called it the Corkscrew Fort, because of the spiral road that wound up the hill to move cannon to its top. Earlier that summer, Washington had ordered that two cannon shots fired from this hill would be the signal that the British had landed on Long Island.

On August 27, 1776, the cannon went off. Washington came down from Manhattan. He stood on this hill alongside General Putnam and watched his army get destroyed in front of him. The Maryland 1st Regiment's stand at the Old Stone House happened in his direct line of sight. The retreat across the marsh happened in his direct line of sight. The defeat happened in his direct line of sight.

That night, the survivors climbed up to this fort and the other fortifications along the Brooklyn Heights ridge. The British, expecting an easy finish in the morning, dug in for a siege.

Two nights later, on August 29 into August 30, under cover of fog, Washington pulled off the impossible. The entire 9,000-man Continental Army, with every horse, every cannon, every wounded soldier, was evacuated across the East River to Manhattan in a single night, in small boats commandeered from Brooklyn fishermen. By dawn, the British woke to empty trenches. The army was gone.

The plaque is on the building, above eye level on the Court Street side. Take a minute with it. From this corner, Washington watched as his army was nearly destroyed. Two nights later he pulled every man across the East River in the dark, and the Revolution survived.