New Utrecht, Brooklyn

New Utrecht (Dutch: Nieuw Utrecht) was a town in western Long Island, New York encompassing all or part of the present-day Bath Beach, Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Borough Park, Dyker Heights and Fort Hamilton neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York City.

In 1643, Anthony Janszoon van Salee, a half-Dutch, half-Moroccan son of a pirate, and a resident of New Amsterdam, obtained from the Director General of New Netherland a patent on a tract of land of more than 200 acres on western Long Island.

A surveyor, Werckhoven was born in Utrecht in the Netherlands, and became a principal investor in the Dutch West India Company.

He moved to New Utrecht from his former residence in New Amsterdam, at the lower part of the island near the current intersection of Broad Street and Exchange Place.

De Sille served as an advisor to Governor Petrus Stuyvesant and as a "schout fiscal",[2] a combination of sheriff and district attorney.

Once a defensive palisade wall was erected around the town of New Utrecht on western Long Island, more residents settled there.

The New Utrecht Cemetery contains a monument, erected in 1910, to honor Dr. James E. DuBois and his assistant Dr. John L. Crane, who died fighting the outbreak.

During the American Revolution, the British made New Utrecht their base of operations for the Battle of Long Island.

The British brought the mortally wounded American General Nathaniel Woodhull to the Nicasius di Sille house for treatment.

From 1776 to the end of the British occupation, sympathizers with the Patriot cause traveled by fishing boats at night across The Narrows to meet with compatriots in Staten Island and New Jersey.

During the War of 1812, the US Army began construction of a fort on Hendrick's Reef, an island offshore the southern tip of what is now Bay Ridge.

The rest of the town's lands are today the neighborhoods of Borough Park, which has a large Hasidic Jewish population, and Bay Ridge.