During the Civil War, Brooklyn was the third largest city in the Union, and more than 30,000 of its residents enlisted as soldiers and sailors. Join Green-Wood Historian Jeff Richman and writer Matthew Dellinger as they share the stories of Brooklynites who took up arms: Clarence D. MacKenzie, the 12 year-old drummer boy who became the first casualty of the Civil War from Kings County; Colonel Edward Fowler who led the 14th Brooklyn Infantry at Gettysburg; Brooklyn native “The Gallant Samuel Sims,” who died at the Battle of the Crater in Petersburg, Virginia; and many others. The tour will also explore the crucial role of women on the home front, namely those who organized The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864, which raised funds for clothing and medical supplies for the troops.

In 1838, just eleven years after New York State abolished slavery, a free Black man named James Weeks made his first purchase of land in Brooklyn. In the same year, Green-Wood Cemetery was established as one of the first rural cemeteries in the United States. This tour begins with a survey of the many prominent Black New Yorkers and abolitionists laid to rest at the Cemetery, including Margaret Pine (1778–1857), the last woman to have lived as a slave in New York, Susan Smith McKinney Steward (1847–1918), whose family owned land in Weeksville and who became first black female doctor in the state, and the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1959–1988), among many others. Then we head to Weeksville Heritage Center in Crown Heights to learn about its history (one of America’s largest free Black communities prior to the Civil War) through the stories of its residents.