Jay St. and State St.

The early years of the Corbett family in Brooklyn are not entirely clear. 

In my initial search for ancestral addresses several years ago, I found the Corbett family listed at 283 Jay St. in the 1870-71 directory.  They disappear for several years, and the next listing I found for them was in the 1875-76 directory, placing them at 359 Jay St.  They also appear at 359 Jay St. in the 1875 NY State Census.

I long wondered about these two Jay St. addresses, much like the multiple Henry St. addresses for the Williams family in the same era.  When I learned about the major updating of addresses in Brooklyn around 1870, I wondered if this could be another case of the family remaining in place and their house number changing.

I ran my AI-assisted process to collect more details, and that strongly suggests this theory is incorrect.  There were five other names of either individuals or families at 283 Jay St. in the 1870-71 directory, suggesting that it was an apartment building and/or that there was more than one building with that number on it (something which did happen, and which the renumbering process attempted to clean up).  While the Corbetts disappeared from the directory the following year, John Cummings is listed at 283 and then 365 Jay St.  Their next door neighbors Roswell Baldwin and Thomas McAllister M.D. are both shown at 281 and then 363 Jay St.  So the street numbers increased by 82 at this particular spot, and 359 Jay St. doesn't fit the pattern.

I did another round of checking the city directories (most of which are easily available online, thanks to the Center for Brooklyn History and others), and found one entry which I had previously missed: in the 1873-74 directory (available instead from FamilySearch).  In that, the Corbetts show up at 318 State St.

I soon found another record showing that address: the return of a birth record for Alice E. Corbett shows her entering the world at 318 State St.

  

So it looks like the Corbetts moved away from Jay St. to State St., and then back again, three doors down from their previous address.  There are still a few gaps in the record, but this fills it in a bit.

 

Looking at Google Street View for 318 State St., it seems quite possible that the buildings there now have been in place since the 1870s.  I haven't verified this yet.

 

318 State St. in 2019