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- BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XVIII.
RICHARD MILLER WOODHULL, sixth generation from Richard Wodhull I., Patentee of Brookhaven, Long Island, was the only son of the Hon. Richard Woodhull V., and Sarah Miller.
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He was born in the year 1774. Was a New York merchant, a man of intelligence and full of ambition.
He purchased thirteen acres of land in the region of Brooklyn, and laid it out in city lots, naming the place Williamsburgh, after his friend, Colonel Williams, U. S. Engineer, who surveyed the land.
Richard Miller Woodhull also established a ferry, a need which he fully appreciated.
Later, in the year 1812, Thomas Morrell of Newtown, Long Island, also obtained a grant for a ferry, and succeeded with his venture. Woodhull having financially embarrassed himself with his too large undertaking, at a period when the district was neither prepared nor populated sufficiently to buy up the laid out Borough lots in the new town of Williamsburgh, the property passed out of his hands, first into the possession of his father-in-law, James Horner Maxwell, of New York City, and finally out of the family altogether. The original name of Williamsburgh was however preserved.
Says John M. Stiles, in his "History of The Town of Williamsburgh," (included in the "History of Brooklyn,") "Woodhull's and Maxwell's experience was that which is common to men who think in advance of their time, but they will ever be mentioned with respect as the fathers of the town."
Richard Miller Woodhull married, March 24, 1810, Marian Margaret, daughter of James Horner Maxwell and Catherine Van Zandt (daughter of Jacobus Van Zandt, the Revolutionary patriot.)
He died November 3, 1815, in New York City and was buried in the Maxwell family vault in Old Trinity Church-yard.
He left a widow and two children.
(See Genealogy, No. 120.)
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1774 - 1815 (41 years)
d. Yes, date unknown 