Mary Meserole Bliss! (Image via Geoff Cobb)
By Geoffrey Cobb | gcobb91839@aol.com
In the fall I am going to self-publish the last book I will ever write about local history. The book is entitled “Greenpoint’s Forgotten Stories” and builds on my first book “Greenpoint’s Forgotten Past.” My books tell the story of how Greenpoint evolved.
The first story I tell in the book is the saga of Mary Meserole Bliss, who saw Greenpoint transformed from isolated self-sufficient rural hamlet into the industrial heart of America’s largest city. She was born on February 14, 1813, when Greenpoint had fewer than two hundred people. and lived until September 11, 1897, by which time Greenpoint had become the home of heavy industry and oil refining.
In my first chapter, I tried to imagine an eighteen-year-old Mary contemplating an offer of marriage from her future husband Neziah Bliss who was more than twenty years older than his future bride. I struggled to capture Mary’s mindset as she considered his offer. A female friend helped me to write the chapter, saying that an eighteen-year-old girl contemplating such an offer would have been on an emotional roller coaster, which I tried to incorporate into my piece on her.
Confounding Mary’s dilemma was the question of physical attraction. From pictures I have seen, Mary was no great beauty, but her hand came with a dowry of thirty-one acres of riverfront property. The dowry alone must have interested Bliss, who wanted to become the area’s first property developer. In my chapter I imagined Mary struggling with the question whether Bliss really loved her or simply wanted to marry her for her dowry.
She decided to marry him, and Bliss and Mary did wed in 1832. Mary bore Bliss six children. Mary’s marriage to Bliss would last more than forty happy years. Her son Archibald became a member of Congress and voted to nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency.
Bliss had the land surveyed and streets laid out, but just as his venture seemed to be most promising, the panic of 1837 hit freezing credit and brought real estate purchases to a virtual halt. Bliss was left on the edge of financial ruin.
Eventually the panic ended, shipbuilders relocated to Greenpoint and Bliss became a wealthy man. He died a very rich man in 1876 at the age of 86, his vision having become a reality.
Mary was a devout member of the Dutch Reformed Church. The Dutch Reformed church on Franklin and Java where they first worshiped was modest, hardly befitting the wealthy Bliss clan. Mary and her mother were the driving force in building a new grand edifice.
They wanted to build a more beautiful and elegant structure. Meserole money funded a new Dutch Reformed Church, one of the most beautiful buildings in the area, on Kent Street. Following the Civil War, plans were finalized for a larger church that was erected in 1869 costing over $50,00, a fortune at the time.
The Dutch Reformed Church on Kent Street was designed by William –Ditmars, a well- known Brooklyn architect and the structure is a gem. The church is a mix of styles and elements a combination of Early Romanesque Revival and High Victorian forms, which made it a unique church, earning it landmark status. Today sadly it sits empty but remains one of the area’s architectural treasures.
Mary left Greenpoint in the 1870s when the environment started to become polluted. She was regarded as one of the pillars of upper-class Brooklyn and an invitation to her soirees was a sign of being accepted into refined Brooklyn society.
Mary died at age eighty-four, having shaped local history. Her acceptance of Neziah Bliss’s marriage proposal completely transformed Greenpoint and laid the groundwork for the area we call home today.
