Timeline of Brooklyn

Brooklyn (/ˈbrʊklɪn/) is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, behind New York County (Manhattan). Brooklyn is also New York City's most populous borough, with 2,736,074 residents in 2020. If each borough were ranked as a city, Brooklyn would rank as the third-most populous in the U.S., after Los Angeles and Chicago.

Named after the Dutch village of Breukelen, it is located on the western end of Long Island and shares a land border with the borough of Queens. Brooklyn has several bridge and tunnel connections to the borough of Manhattan across the East River and the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge connects it with Staten Island. With a land area of 70.82 square miles (183.4 km2) and a water area of 26 square miles (67 km2), Kings County is the state of New York's fourth-smallest county by land area and third-smallest by total area.

Brooklyn was an independent incorporated city until January 1, 1898, when, after a long political campaign and public relations battle during the 1890s, according to the new Municipal Charter of "Greater New York", Brooklyn was consolidated with other cities, towns, and counties, to form the modern City of New York, surrounding the Upper New York Bay with five constituent boroughs. The borough continues, however, to maintain a distinct culture. Many Brooklyn neighborhoods are ethnic enclaves. Brooklyn's official motto, displayed on the Borough seal and flag, is Eendraght Maeckt Maght, which translates from early modern Dutch as "Unity makes strength."

In the first decades of the 21st century, Brooklyn has experienced a renaissance as a destination for hipsters, with concomitant gentrification, dramatic house price increases, and a decrease in housing affordability. Some new developments are required to include affordable housing units. Since the 2010s, Brooklyn has evolved into a thriving hub of entrepreneurship, high technology start-up firms, postmodern art and design.

Toponym

The name Brooklyn is derived from the original Dutch town of Breukelen. The oldest mention of the settlement in the Netherlands, is in a charter of 953 of Holy Roman Emperor Otto I, namely Broecklede. This is a composition of the two words broeck, meaning bog or marshland and lede, meaning small (dug) water stream specifically in peat areas. Breuckelen in the American continent was established in 1646, and the name first appeared in print in 1663.

Over the past two millennia, the name of the ancient town in Holland has been Bracola, Broccke, Brocckede, Broiclede, Brocklandia, Broekclen, Broikelen, Breuckelen, and finally Breukelen.[17] The New Amsterdam settlement of Breuckelen also went through many spelling variations, including Breucklyn, Breuckland, Brucklyn, Broucklyn, Brookland, Brockland, Brocklin, and Brookline/Brook-line. There have been so many variations of the name that its origin has been debated; some have claimed breuckelen means "broken land." The final name of Brooklyn, however, is the most accurate to its meaning.

History

The history of European settlement in Brooklyn spans more than 350 years. The settlement began in the 17th century as the small Dutch-founded town of "Breuckelen" on the East River shore of Long Island, grew to be a sizeable city in the 19th century and was consolidated in 1898 with New York City (then confined to Manhattan and the Bronx), the remaining rural areas of Kings County, and the largely rural areas of Queens and Staten Island, to form the modern City of New York.

Colonial era New Netherland

The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle Long Island's western edge, which was then largely inhabited by the Lenape, an Algonquian-speaking American Indian tribe often referred to in European documents by a variation of the place name "Canarsie". Bands were associated with place names, but the colonists thought their names represented different tribes. The Breuckelen settlement was named after Breukelen in the Netherlands; it was part of New Netherland. The Dutch West India Company lost little time in chartering the six original parishes (listed here by their later English town names): Gravesend: in 1645, settled under Dutch patent by English followers of Anabaptist Deborah Moody, named for 's-Gravenzande, Netherlands, or Gravesend, England; Brooklyn Heights: as Breuckelen in 1646, after the town now spelled Breukelen, Netherlands. Breuckelen was along Fulton Street (now Fulton Mall) between Hoyt Street and Smith Street (according to H. Stiles and P. Ross). Brooklyn Heights, or Clover Hill, is where the village of Brooklyn was founded in 1816; Flatlands: as Nieuw Amersfoort in 1647; Flatbush: as Midwout in 1652; Nieuw Utrecht in 1652, after the city of Utrecht, Netherlands; and Bushwick: as Boswijck in 1661.

The colony's capital of New Amsterdam, across the East River, obtained its charter in 1653. The neighborhood of Marine Park was home to North America's first tide mill. It was built by the Dutch, and the foundation can be seen today. But the area was not formally settled as a town. Many incidents and documents relating to this period are in Gabriel Furman's 1824 compilation.

Province of New York

Present-day Brooklyn left Dutch hands after the English captured the New Netherland colony in 1664, a prelude to the Second Anglo-Dutch War. New Netherland was taken in a naval action, and the English renamed the new capture for their naval commander, James, Duke of York, brother of the then monarch King Charles II and future king himself as King James II. Brooklyn became a part of the West Riding of York Shire in the Province of New York, one of the Middle Colonies of nascent British America.

On November 1, 1683, Kings County was partitioned from the West Riding of York Shire, containing the six old Dutch towns on southwestern Long Island, as one of the "original twelve counties". This tract of land was recognized as a political entity for the first time, and the municipal groundwork was laid for a later expansive idea of a Brooklyn identity.

Lacking the patroon and tenant farmer system established along the Hudson River Valley, this agricultural county unusually came to have one of the highest percentages of slaves among the population in the "Original Thirteen Colonies" along the Atlantic Ocean eastern coast of North America.

This is a timeline and chronology of the history of Brooklyn, New York. Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's boroughs, and was settled in 1646.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

17th century

• 1646 – Village of "Breuckelen" on the western end of Long Island authorized by the colonizing Dutch West India Company for their North American colony of New Netherland. Named after the town of Breukelen in the province of Utrecht in the Netherlands, "the old country".
• 1652 – The Wyckoff House is estimated to have been built in 1652, one of the first structures built by Europeans on Long Island. Only a small section remains from 1652. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1967. and is owned by New York City but is operated by a nonprofit agency.
• 1654 - Municipal privileges of Brooklyn enlarged.
• 1658 Old Gravesend Cemetery – National Register of Historic Places, a cemetery (now at Gravesend Neck Road and McDonald Avenue in Gravesend), was founded about 1658 and contains the graves of a number of the original patentees and settlers with their families.
• 1664 – Dutch (Governor) Peter Stuyvesant surrenders the colony to the Royal Navy's English fleet under the authority of the James, the Duke of York. New Netherland becomes the Province of New York.
• 1665 – perhaps Brooklyn's first murder trial, Albert Cornelis Wantenaer was found guilty of manslaughter for the death in Wallabout Bay of Barent Jansen Blom.
• 1677 New Utrecht Reformed Church established of the Dutch Reformed Church and is the fourth oldest church in Brooklyn. Both the church and the cemetery are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

18th century

• 1700 – New Utrecht Reformed Church built.
• 1744 – Joost Van Nuyse House, original section was built in 1744 and enlarged between 1793 and 1806. It was moved to its present site in 1925. It is a 1+1⁄2-story frame house with a steeply pitched flared roof. and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.
• 1766 – Wyckoff-Bennett Homestead is believed to have been built before 1766. During the American Revolution, it housed Hessian soldiers for the British Army. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976.
• 1776
  • June 22 - Mayor David Mathews was arrested in Flatbush on orders from George Washington related to his suspected involvement in the Hickey Plot to kill him.
  • August 27 – Battle of Long Island (also known as the "Battle of Brooklyn" or the "Battle of Brooklyn Heights"), the largest battle in the American Revolutionary War starts. British Army wins, beginning the New York and New Jersey campaign. The British set up a system of prison ships anchored in Brooklyn's Wallabout Bay, where more American patriot soldiers and civilian captives died than on all the battlefields, combined.
• 1780 – Fort Brooklyn constructed in Brooklyn Heights area along east bank of the East River by the British Army, then occupying New York Town and Manhattan, near Fort Stirling (named for Patriot general, also called "Lord Stirling"). Later razed for housing development by 1823–1825.
• 1783 – "Evacuation Day", November 25, British forces leave New York and Manhattan under terms of Treaty of Paris after occupation of seven years. Gen. George Washington and his officers of the Continental Army take control.
• 1786 – Erasmus Hall High School – oldest public high school in the city, founded as Erasmus Hall Academy, a private school. Later joined by free academy in the 1840s as the first public high school, which later becomes City College of New York. Wooden schoolhouse was opened in 1787. Later wings were added and removed.
• 1788 – New York State debates and ratifies the new Constitution to replace the previous Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.
• 1790 – Small population recorded for the villages of Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights on the western end of Long Island in the first decennial United States Census of 1790.
• 1797 – Population: 1,603 recorded in newly published reference book The American Gazetteer.