The Howard Colored Orphan Asylum opened in 1866 and was located on the corner of Dean Street and Troy Avenue. After mobs burned down the Colored Orphan Asylum during the Draft Riots in New York City, the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum provided a much needed refuge to educate and protect orphaned black children.

Lesson 11, Worksheet 1 What’s Happening in Weeksville?

Colored School #2 was once located at the corner of Buffalo Avenue and Pacific Street. The school’s principal Junius C. Morel was a national journalist writing for various anti-slavery newspapers, lecturer, political activist, and prominent citizen of Weeksville. He became the principal around 1847 and served for over thirty years.

Colored School No. 2 (Public School No. 68). 1892. Prospect Park exhibit photography collection. V1974.36.17. Brooklyn Historical Society.

The New Building of the Brooklyn Howard Colored Orphan Asylum. ca. 1880. V1974.39.11. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Brooklyn Home for Aged Colored People, Courtesy of Brooklyn Public Library—Brooklyn Collection.

Zion Home for the Colored Aged was once located on Dean Street between Albany and Troy Avenues. It was established in 1869 by Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward, the first female doctor in Brooklyn and the third African-American female doctor in the nation. Dr. McKinney Steward was the daughter of one of Weeksville’s early land investors, Sylvanus Smith.

Weeksville began its own newspaper the Freedman’s Torchlight in January 1866. Amos Freeman, a longtime educator in Newark, NJ and Brooklyn, NY and pastor at Siloam Presbyterian Church, served as associate editor. Its editorial content emphasized self-help and self-determination in the black community particularly in the early months of Reconstruction.

Lesson 11, Worksheet 1, con’t What’s Happening in Weeksville?

Freedman’s Torchlight, December, 1866. Courtesy of the Watkinson Library, Trinity College