March 8: “The Great Divine,” Rev. Henry Ward Beecher of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights, who, according the the Pulitizer Prize-winning biography had been “The Most Famous Man in America” only to be diminished by scandal, died on this date in 1887.
March 7: Susan Smith McKinney-Steward, who was the first black woman to be licensed as a doctor in New York State, died on this date in 1918.
March 6: On this date in 1957, fire destroyed Louis Comfort Tiffany‘s magnificent mansion, Laurelton Hall, in Oyster Bay on Long Island; much of his art there was destroyed, but a good deal of it was salvaged.
March 5: The “Mad Poet,” McDonald Clarke, died in his jail cell on this date in 1842 by drinking water until he drowned.
March 4: On this date in 1841, engineer David Bates Douglass‘s brilliant plan for the design of Green-Wood Cemetery was adopted by its board of trustees.
March 3: “Boss” Tweed, who in a long career made his name synonymous with corruption and theft from the public coffers on a massive scale, was born on this date in 1823.
March 2: John Eberhard Faber, pencil manufacturer in Greenpoint who put the eraser on the pencil, died on this date in 1879.
March 1: Civil War Colonel Leopold Von Gilsa, a Prussian soldier who came to America and fought for the Union, then sold pianos after the war, died on this date in 1870.
February 28: Simon Boerum, a Brooklyn farmer who represented New York in the Continental Congresses of 1774 and 1775, was born on February 29, 1724.
February 27: Notorious prisoner of war camp Andersonville, run by the Confederates, opened on this date in 1864; 18 soldiers who are interred at Green-Wood would be released alive from there; one, Michael Wallace, would die from disease in 1865, just months after his release.