 Weeksville was named after James Weeks, an African-American stevedore  from Virginia.In 1838 (11 years after the final abolition of slavery in New York State) Weeks bought a plot of land from Henry C. Thompson, a free African American and land investor, in the Ninth Ward of central Brooklyn.Thompson had acquired the land from Edward Copeland, a politically minded European American and Brooklyn grocer, in 1835.Previously Copeland bought the land from an heir of John Lefferts, a member of one of the most prominent and land-holding families in Brooklyn.