Brooklyn, New York • Newspaper Archive
The neighborhood surrounding Windsor Place — assembled from digitized editions of the Brooklyn Eagle, the Times Union, The Chat, and a half-dozen other local papers spanning 1849 to 1965.
Walter E. Beadle & Lydia E. Arnold married in Windsor Terrace — then still part of West Flatbush, Long Island, not yet annexed by Brooklyn.
Grover C. Flaherty, listed as a medical student, married Mary Victoria Lynch in Windsor Terrace. They honeymooned in the Litchfield hills of Connecticut.
Gladys Govern and Robert Frederick Witteman were married in Windsor Terrace during the Depression — and still managed a honeymoon to Cuba.
Elizabeth Franklin, a concert pianist, married Walter B. Scott, a professor of English, in Windsor Terrace. Three different papers covered it.
Susan Mary Fechner and Paul Fechner (same surname — she kept it) honeymooned in both Puerto Rico and Cuba the year before WWII changed everything.
Edwin G. Kehrt, described as an air conditioning engineer — a brand-new profession in 1940 — married Beatrice Pearl Hamlin in Windsor Terrace. Pocono Mountains honeymoon.
The dominant institution in Windsor Terrace for decades. Twenty-three of the marriages in this archive were celebrated there — more than any other venue by far. Rev. T.G. Jackson officiated so many of them in the 1890s that his name appears across dozens of records. The church stood on Prospect Avenue and served the neighborhood's Protestant core.
Fourteen marriages in this archive were held at the Catholic church on Prospect Avenue, reflecting the neighborhood's growing Irish and Italian Catholic population from the 1890s onward. It and Holy Apostles together account for well over half of all recorded Windsor Terrace weddings.
Seven recorded marriages, mostly concentrated in the 1910s–1920s, suggesting a stable German Lutheran community in the neighborhood during that era.
Philadelphia. Sag Harbor. Connecticut. Nyack. Niagara Falls. The honeymoon trips of the first Windsor Terrace generation were modest by later standards — a few days, rarely far. The 1888 newlyweds Lott and Jean Purvis went to Sag Harbor. Elizabeth and James Robb went to Washington in 1897.
The Catskills became the default escape for the middle decades — Viola Fink & Henry Meyer went there in 1928, as did Carrie Pfeiffer & Ernest Boetsch in 1909. The Thousand Islands, Atlantic City, and Albany were also popular. The Great Lakes for the architects Nickel & Boettger in 1915.
By the 1930s, a Windsor Terrace couple could honeymoon in Havana (Govern & Witteman, 1932). In 1939, Susan and Paul Fechner went to Puerto Rico and Cuba — both. The Poconos became fashionable for the 1940 generation. The Depression didn't stop people from going somewhere.
The occupations noted in marriage records give a cross-section of who lived here: a manager (1886), a businessman (1902), a medical student becoming a doctor (1906), two architects from Iowa (1915), a WWI lieutenant (1920), two pastors who married into the neighborhood (1901, 1922), a concert pianist and an English professor (1936), an air conditioning engineer (1940), and a traffic supervisor (1945).
The most surprising occupational entry: both Frieda May Nickel and Christian L. Boettger are listed as architects in their 1915 Windsor Place wedding records. They came from Iowa and honeymooned on the Great Lakes. A married couple, both architects, in 1915 — that would have been unusual anywhere.
Elizabeth Franklin is listed as a concert pianist in her 1936 marriage to Walter B. Scott, a professor of English. Three separate papers covered the wedding. The bride's musical career was notable enough to lead the coverage in each one.
The Library of Congress holds a 1911 synoptical history of Kings County that mentions Windsor Terrace by name. The work of the Borough President of Brooklyn (1903) also references the area. By the early 20th century, Windsor Terrace was already being written into the civic history of Brooklyn.
New York's Evening World — a major city paper of the era — ran items mentioning Windsor Place and Windsor Terrace in at least six separate Brooklyn editions between 1892 and 1894. The neighborhood was appearing in the city press from its earliest years as a settled community.