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Catharine Ferry

Ferry route

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ5052671
Source-derived summary

The Catharine Ferry was a ferry route connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn in the United States, joining Catherine Street (or, then, Catharine Street, as seen on the name of the terminal building), in Manhattan and Main Street in Brooklyn across the East River.

The ferry, originally known as the New Ferry, was established on August 1, 1795 to supplement the Fulton Ferry (Old Ferry). It eventually passed into the hands of Samuel Bowne, who sold it to Smith & Bulkley on March 24, 1852. Being unable to compete with the one-cent fare adopted by the Brooklyn Union Ferry Company in November 1850, it was sold to the new Union Ferry Company of Brooklyn (the successor to the Brooklyn Union) in December 1853. For many years thereafter, it was a busy ferry service between the Catharine Ferry Terminal at the foot of Main Street, Brooklyn, and Catharine Street in downtown New York. Finally, after the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, and Williamsburg Bridge, as well as the BMT and IRT subway tunnels, had siphoned off its passengers, the Catharine Ferry shut down in 1912.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Catharine Ferry” as ferry route. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Catharine, Ferry and route.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1795, 1852, 1850, 1853—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1795-08-01. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Catharine, Ferry and route providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Catharine Ferry”, the useful work is to connect “ferry route” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5052671. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1795, 1852, 1850 and 1853.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Catharine Ferry”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Catharine Ferry primary sources, Catharine Ferry archive and Catharine research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Catharine Ferry” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.