St. Ann's Church located at 131 Clinton Street and Livingston Street, is known as the Mother of Brooklyn Churches. Its parishioners have helped to organize St. Mary's, St. Luke's, two St. Paul's, St. John's, and Christ Church. St. Ann's dates from 1784, when its founding members held services at 40 Fulton Street, then the home of Garret Rappelje. Its first building was erected in 1805 at Washington and Sands Streets. In 1825 it moved into a brick edifice, and in 1869 into its present quarters, a Gothic structure with traceried gables and heavy buttresses, completed in 1869 from plans by Renwick and Sands. In its record books the baptisms of Negroes are noted as "black" and "free black