Charlotte Melmoth and the Ghost of Red Hook Lane

The little alley in Brooklyn Heights called Red Hook Lane was once truly a lane "overspread with leafy branches." Built in 1760, Red Hook Lane had been the main thoroughfare between Brooklyn and the village of Red Hook, a point (in Dutch, "hoek") named for its red-clay soil. The Lane is now a shade of its former self, a tiny one block long alleyway between Boerum Place, Livingston Street and the Fulton Mall. It is in the middle of the map detail on the left, just below Fulton Street and slightly SE of Borough Hall. Below and at right is a 1931 photograph of the remnants of Red Hook Lane. It is somewhat east of where Charlotte Melmoth's cottage once stood, and where a man was frightened to death by ghosts.

English actress Charlotte Melmoth was one of the leading ladies of the American stage at the end of the 18th century. She was known for her portrayals of Elizabeth I, Mrs. Malaprop and Lady Macbeth, among other roles. She had been a successful actress in her native England, too.

Charlotte was the estranged wife of actor/author Courtney Melmoth, whose real name was Samuel Jackson Pratt. She was born in 1749, possibly the daughter of a farmer, and made her acting debut at Covent Garden. She and Courtney were in France in the late 1770s; Courtney managed to meet Benjamin Franklin in 1777 in Paris, and early in 1778 sent Franklin a series of letters in which he asks for money and shows off Charlotte's poetry skills.

Charlotte came to America in the 1790s where she acted for several years. She retired either due to "advancing age," or (as one source notes) due to a "fiery temper" which got her in trouble of some unnamed sort. She settled in Brooklyn, in a cottage on Red Hook Lane, around the year 1810, and established both a boarding house and a school for young ladies. Her pupils said that she was "dignified in manner and kind in word and deed," and liked to "declaim" when she read aloud to them.

Charlotte's cottage was located on what is now present-day Carroll Street, between Clinton and Henry, in Brooklyn Heights. Gilbert Stuart, the artist who painted the famous picture of George Washington, was one of her boarders. In the early 19th century this was "a lonely spot," surrounded by farms.

Nearby was "the old Suydam house," on the west side of Court Street between Atlantic and Pacific Avenues. In that house a young lady named Hannah Conrad had died of yellow fever in the early 19th century; she had contracted it by getting too close to the burial of a fever victim in St. Ann's churchyard (also a haunted place). It isn't made clear whether it was Hannah who was the ghost, but people definitely thought they had seen and heard ghosts there. It had been unoccupied for many years. In addition, the ghost of a murdered man was said to haunt a spot on Red Hook Lane, possibly a soldier from then-nearby Cobble Hill Fort. One of the ghosts of Red Hook Lane was said to have killed a man at the Melmoth house in the 1820s-30s.

After Charlotte's death in October 1823, her house became a tavern. A young man named Boerum had been drinking there with a group of friends and they had run out of whiskey. Boerum volunteered to ride down Red Hook Lane to the Fulton Ferry and get some more. He never came back. Finally, after midnight, his friends went looking for him. They found him lying in the middle of the lane, grasping an empty liquor jug, his face frozen in a grimace. His horse was standing nearby. They took Boerum back to the tavern but he never regained consciousness, and died a few days later. It was said that he had seen a ghost in the abandoned Suydam house, and died of fright.

SOURCES & IMAGES

Benardo, Leonard and Jennifer Weiss. Brooklyn By Name (NYU Press, 2006), p. 50.

"Haunted," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Oct. 14, 1887, p. 4.
"Old School Girl Days," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Nov. 20, 1887, p. 6.
"De Roede Hoek Lane," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Nov. 27, 1887, p. 15.

Courtney Melmoth's letters to Benjamin Franklin at the Franklin Papers. Charlotte's poem is quoted in the letter of Jan. 28, 1778.
Charlotte Melmoth at Answers.com, whence the fiery temper anecdote.

Red Hook Lane explained at the incomparable Forgotten New York.
The Remnants of Red Hook Lane at the View From Here.
Detail of map showing modern Red Hook Lane is from my 1974 Hagstrom Pocket Atlas of NYC; Red Hook Lane is in the center, just below Fulton St.

Image of Charlotte Melmoth from NYPL Digital Gallery; image of her as Queen Elizabeth (at top) also from NYPL Digital Gallery. The photograph of Red Hook Lane is from 1931, and appears courtesy of the Brooklyn Public Library.