The Wallabout was first settled by Europeans when several families of
French-speaking Walloons opted to purchase land there in the early 1630s, having arrived in
New Netherland in the previous decade from
Holland. Settlement of the area began in the mid-1630s when
Joris Jansen Rapelje exchanged trade goods with the
Canarsee Indians for some of land at Wallabout Bay, but Rapelje, like other early Wallabout settlers, waited at least a decade before relocating full-time to the area, until conflicts with the tribes had been resolved. Most historical accounts put Rapelje's house as the first house built at Wallabout Bay. His daughter
Sarah was the first child born of European parentage in
New Netherland, and Rapelje later served as a Brooklyn
magistrate as well as a member of the
Council of Twelve Men. Rapelje's son-in-law
Hans Hansen Bergen owned a large tract adjoining Rapelje's. Nearby were tobacco plantations belonging to Jan and Pieter Monfort, Peter Caesar Alberto, and other farmers. Starting in 1637, the Wallabout served as the landing site of the first ferry across the East River from lower Manhattan. Cornelis Dircksen, the lone ferryman, farmed plots on both sides—near to where the
Brooklyn Bridge now spans—to best employ his time on either bank of the river. A
feudal system of
land tenure was suspended in 1638, and the small settlement became a colony of
freeholders: after a ten-year period of paying the
Dutch East India Company a tenth of their yield, colonists would own their farmland. The humble colony expanded out from the Wallabout to become the
city of Brooklyn. Wallabout Bay was the site of one of the earliest murder trials in Brooklyn's history. On June 5, 1665, Barent Jansen Blom, an immigrant from Sweden and progenitor of the Blom/Bloom family of Brooklyn and the lower Hudson Valley, was stabbed to death by Albert Cornelis Wantenaer, allegedly in self-defense. Wantenaer was tried for murder in the Court of Assize on October 2, 1665. He was convicted of a lesser charge of manslaughter, suffering the punishment of loss of his property and a year's imprisonment. The area was the site where
British prison ships moored during the
American Revolutionary War from 1776 to 1783, were thousands of American prisoners of war were kept. Around 12,000 American prisoners of war were said to have died in captivity by 1783, when all the remaining prisoners were freed. The majority died due to disease; some were buried on the eroding shore in shallow graves, or often simply thrown overboard. The
Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument in nearby
Fort Greene, which houses some of the prisoners' remains, was built to honor these casualties. The bay eventually became the site of the
Brooklyn Navy Yard. Parts of the bay were filled in to expand the yard. In the late 19th century, fill created a small island, as depicted in the
Taylor Map of New York, and later fill joined it to the mainland. ==Potter's Field==