Wyckoff Bennett Mont House
Revolutionary War Heritage Trail
This Dutch-American farmhouse is a quiet reminder that the Battle of Brooklyn, one of the biggest conflicts of the Revolutionary War, took place when Kings County was still mostly farm country. The country boasted fewer than 4,000 inhabitants, one third of whom were slaves working on land owned by families descended from 17th-century Dutch immigrants.
Hendrick Wyckoff built the house in 1766. The site he chose lay along Kings Highway, then the County’s main east-west artery. After the British invasion in August 1776, Hessian soldiers were quartered here. Several of them left their mark by etching their names and rank on window panes among them Toepher Captain Regt. De Ditrurth and “M. Bach Lieutenant V. Hessen Hanau Artillerie’s”. When the Battle of Brooklyn began on August 27, 1776, these men may well have taken part in the attack that drove American defenders from Battle Pass, in what is now Prospect Park, and nearly destroyed the army under the command of George Washington.
Marker is at the intersection of E. 22nd Street and Avenue P, on the right when traveling north on E. 22nd Street.
Courtesy hmdb.org
