HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 569

PART II. RAIL ROADS AND PLANK ROADS.

Brooklyn, from the period of the Revolution, to within a comparatively short time, was the terminus of numerous stage routes, coming from every part of the island. As the village expanded, and the necessity of communication between its different localities increased, various attempts were made by private enterprise, to run semi-regular coaches or conveyances, first, towards the navy yard, then to other points. But all these attempts were but temporary, and unsatisfactory. Some thirty years ago, Mr. Montgomery Queen, the well known proprietor of the Excelsior stables in Washington street, becoming interested with Mr. Geo. Howland and others, in the improvement of a large property, in the then out-of-town Bedford neighborhood, found that the great hindrance to securing a desirable class of purchasers for his land, was the lack of regular and efficient communication between it and Fulton ferry. A line of stages, it was true, pretended (as it had, for several years), to keep up the connection between the two points; but it was managed in the most irregular manner. Poor stages, and poorer horses; easy drivers, who deviated from the route, hither or thither, obedient to the call of a handkerchief fluttering from a window blind, or the “halloo !” of a passenger anywhere in sight. Mr. Queen, therefore, purchased the entire “kit and caboodle” of the stage company; put on entirely new con. veyances, horses, and equipments, and started what he intended should be an omnibus line to Bedford, running regularly, on a carefully arranged time table. His greatest difficulty was in making either the public or his employees understand that a stage route could be run on time. Despite his most explicit orders that the stages were to leave their termini, at a specified minute, with or without passengers, he was bothered excessively by the dilatoriness of both starters and drivers, who argued and delayed, and delayed and argued; until, compelled by threats of instant dismissal, they grumblingly and deprecatingly undertook what they prophesied would be a failure. But he was right, and they were wrong; regularity brought public confidence, and to this line of stages is owing very much of Brooklyn’s prosperity and growth. When city rail roads came into use, Mr. Queen, seeing that they would soon supersede the stages, became a warm promoter of the new enterprize, and was largely identified with the first organized Brooklyn city rail road company. There is, however, more of Brooklyn history interwoven with that of stages and cars, than we can find space for in this volume, and we must briefly outline the subject.