Old Stone House hosts Revolution remembrance

On Saturday, Aug. 26, Kim Maier, executive director of the Old Stone House in Washington Park, will preside over the annual remembrance ceremony for the Maryland 400 starting at noon. In addition to members of the Rawley Post of the American Legion, the Irish American Parade Committee and local officials, a busload of members of historical societies from Maryland will again travel to Brooklyn to help commemorate the event.

The ceremony will feature an array of uniformed re-enactors depicting the Colonial era. The program will also include an invocation, a narrative, a reading of the Maryland 400 roster, a wreath-laying at the park’s flagpole and a rifle salute by American Legionnaires from the McFadden Brothers Post No. 1380. Later, the present-day Marylanders will travel to Prospect Park to visit the monument to the Maryland 400 that was funded by the State of Maryland.

The Old Stone House was reconstructed in 1935 and a dedication ceremony was held on May 19 of that year. Below is a segment of a Brooklyn Daily Eagle story that ran the following day under the headline, “1,500 Attend Colorful Ceremony Sponsored by the Society Old Brooklynites, Which Perpetuates Heroic Battle of Revolution at 3rd St. and 4th Ave.”

“On the spot where ‘the Declaration of Independence was sealed in blood on the fields of South Brooklyn,’ the reconstructed Old Stone House at Gowanus on the Battlefield of Long Island [Brooklyn] was dedicated yesterday under the sponsorship of the Society of Old Brooklynites and the Department of Parks. The house and the model playground which surrounds it are at 3rd St. between 4th and 5th Aves.

“Representatives of civic, historical and veterans’ groups heard speakers describe the gallant defense of less than 500 American troops who threw back 20,000 British Red Coats, preventing the utter defeat of the colonies at the outset of the war.

“Borough Building Commissioner Edwin H. Thatcher accepted the house and playground for Borough President Raymond V. Ingersoll and the borough. Frederick Gross, borough director of parks, made the presentation.

“In a colorful ceremony in which color guards of the Police Department and the Old Guards of New York State participated the flag was raised over the house.

“Henry L. Redfield, president of the Society of Old Brooklynites, said, ‘We honor ourselves in rededicating the Old Stone House. Let us remember with religious awe that as citizens we should rededicate ourselves to the sentiments of Washington and the Declaration of Independence.’

“‘Our better natures respond to the deeds of those great men who made America what it is today,’ said former Brooklyn Magistrate Leo Healy.”