Melrose Hall -- Brooklyn History

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4 of this story.

Everyone loves a good ghost story, and Melrose Hall, as we learned in the first and second chapters of our story, has a doozy. It is a tale of marital infidelity and weakness, and a cautionary tale of how an obsessive and secret love can have deadly results.

The story revolves around Colonel William Axtell, a Loyalist Tory officer in King George’s service during the Revolutionary War. Legend has it that his large country estate, located in what is now Prospect Lefferts Gardens, was where he kept his mistress, locked away from the rest of the household in a secret room above his ballroom.

No one knew she was there except an elderly slave named Miranda, who cared for the woman, who may have been named Isabella, or else was Alva, the sister of Axtell’s wife.

At any rate, she lived in solitary splendor in her secret room, so in love with Axtell that she was fine with the arrangement, even though she was locked in the room, and never able to get out, or leave the estate. No one else at the Hall knew she existed except Miranda and Axtell. When all were asleep, Miranda would bring Isabella to Axtell’s rooms, and she would take her back before anyone woke up in the morning.

As told in Chapter Two, this little arrangement worked well until the Colonel had to go out on a military campaign. He told Isabella she should leave, as he would not be there to make sure she was safe, but she refused to leave, professing that she would rather die than be without him. Besides, she had Miranda to feed her and take care of her.

This is a ghost story, so we know that didn’t work out as planned. Sometime after Axtell left, Miranda got sick and died, unable to tell anyone about the lady in the secret room. When Miranda did not come with food for several days, Isabella, instead of banging on the doors or floor, quietly sat there and starved to death, faithful to Axtell to the end.

When he returned, months later, he was horrified to learn that Miranda had died, because he knew that Isabella was dead too, Sure enough, she made a large spectral splash on his welcoming home party, causing him to kill himself with shame and grief. She was said to haunt the estate, wandering the halls in death, as she never wandered in life.

Legends have a way of growing and being embellished, so there are several versions of this story. There was also another tale of Melrose Hall, and that is more involved with actual history. Colonel Axtell was the commander of a Loyalist regiment called the Nassau Blues, a small band of men who, like him, opposed the independence of the American colonies, and were loyal to Great Britain.

The Colonel and his men were known to be cruel, and tales of prisoners kept in the secret basement dungeons of Melrose Hall made the estate a place of interest to American forces. During the Battle of Brooklyn, at the beginning of the war, a cannon ball found its way through Melrose Hall, lobbed there by one of Washington’s generals.

But the battle was a resounding defeat for the Americans, and along with George Washington, they left New York City and Brooklyn for the rest of the war, leaving both to be occupied by the British until the war’s end. One of the American officers to leave was a man named Aquila Giles.

He was a part of the legend of Melrose Hall, one that would warm the heart of the most melodramatic romance lovers. Mr. Giles was a handsome young man who, before the war, had attended one of the many parties thrown by the Axtell’s.

There, like the story of Romeo and Juliet, he met Elizabeth Shipton, known as “Eliza” and “Betsy” in different versions of the story. She was the beautiful adopted daughter of Colonel Axtell, and was actually his niece. Aquila and Eliza laid eyes on each other and it was over. By the end of the evening, they were madly in love, and wanted to marry.

Aquila went to Axtell, and told him that he intended to marry his daughter, and would the Colonel give his permission? Love, as everyone in this story would come to know, clouds the brain, because Aquila also decided to give Axtell his opinion of British rule, and American Liberty, too.

He was a Patriot, and was for American independence. Why he needed to tell Axtell, a proud subject of the King, and officer in the King’s Loyalist army, is unknown, but Axtell didn’t take either the idea of the wedding or the idea of a revolutionary Patriot in the family, very well. He told Aquila Giles to leave, and never darken his door again. And the young man would NOT be marrying his daughter.

Giles managed to get word to his love that he still loved her and would be back someday, and left to enlist in the new American army. He soon was raised to the rank of Colonel himself, and fought bravely in the Revolution.

At the end of the war, the American forces had a list of people who were prominent Tory sympathizers, and many of them lost their lands and were forced to leave the country.

Melrose Hall was near the top of the list of properties that were to be seized by the government because of the many rumors and testimonial stories of Colonel Axtell’s activities with prisoners. Axtell and his wife had already fled to Nova Scotia, and then back to England, before the war ended. He didn’t die from an encounter with his mistress’s ghost, but died in England, in 1895.

Eliza Shipton did not go back to England. As in any good love story, Aquila, now a general, came back for her, and they were married. When the confiscated estate came on the market, he bought it, and they lived there for over 25
years. Unfortunately, the estate proved to be too expensive to keep up, and it was sold to a man named Bateman Lloyd, who died there, of natural causes, peacefully in his sleep. Or did he?

In 1835, James Mowatt, a lawyer, bought the house for his wife, Anna Cora Mowatt. Mrs. Mowatt had been a celebrated actress, and this house would be her most famous stage.

Anna Mowatt loved the tales and drama of the house. She loved the stories about the haunting by the mistress who died for love, and the star-crossed lovers who would find each other after war, marry, and live in the house her father had banished her lover from.

She embraced the tales of tortured soldiers and terrified slaves, all of whom were also ghostly participants in her tales. All of the stories were told and retold by her as she entertained in the fine old manor house, where she lived from 1836 until 1841.

Anna Mowatt and her husband had money, in the beginning anyway, and they used it to fix up the house, which by then was a hundred years old, and tend the grounds, which were becoming overgrown, but were filled with roses and other flowers.

It was she who named the estate Melrose Hall, not the Axtell’s, or the builder of the estate, John Lane. If it had a name then, it’s lost to history.

It’s said that she entertained a lot, and her sunny disposition helped chase away the unhappy ghosts of the past. She was said to have enjoyed those legends so much that she used to dress in period costume, even when not giving parties, much to the horror of her staid Dutch neighbors.

At some point, while living at the house, James Mowatt lost all of their fortune, through poor stock investments. Anna Cora Mowatt became the breadwinner, keeping the house, and food in the pantry by sheer determination and talent; earning a good living as an actress, as well as playwright and novelist.

Like any good romantic, it was probably she who embellished the tales, so that the sorrowful mistress and the star crossed lovers read like a Gothic Victorian novel. In some tales, reported in newspapers towards the end of the 19th century, Aquila and Eliza met often, after her father banished him.

She stood at the gate, and he stood outside of it, both keeping to the terms of his banishment, and her inability to leave the estate. They met often, even during the war, and eloped, as the cause of American independence was won. It was all great stuff, and Mrs. Mowatt’s theatrics kept them in the house for five wonderful years.

She would later write in “Autobiography of an Actress,” published in 1854, “there were dark and spacious vaults beneath the kitchens, where it was said English prisoners had been confined, and there was a secret chamber above the great ballroom to which no access could be found, save by a small window.

The neighbors confirmed that a young woman had been starved to death in that chamber and that her ghost wandered at night about the house. Indeed, the report had gained such credence that nothing could have induced many of the older inhabitants of the village to pass at night beneath the haunted roof.”

The property passed from the Mowatt’s to three more owners, until it became the property of Dr. Homer L. Bartlett, in 1880. He made the biggest changes to the hall since it had been built. He tore down all of the wings, leaving only the main house, which he had moved to Bedford Avenue.

At that time, Bedford Avenue was being recut through the borough, and the house was right in the path of the street. It was moved back several hundred yards, so that it stood just off the street, behind a stand of trees.

The move and the demolition brought new artifacts to light, including iron chains affixed to the wall in the cellars, which were thought to have held prisoners, just as the tales said.

Some tales say they also found a skeleton of a young woman in the secret room above the demolished ballroom, but other tales say that instead the workers found hundreds of bodies of small birds, which had gotten trapped there, and the flapping of the birds trying to escape, accounted for all of the sounds people had attributed to the ghost of Melrose Hall. Hmmm, nice try.

Next time: By the 1890s, what’s left of Melrose Hall is still standing, but not for long. The final chapter in the story of Melrose Hall, and the development of Melrose Park, a neighborhood you’ve never heard of, concludes next time.

(Drawing from 1912 Brooklyn Eagle)


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

    1 2