Brooklyn, NY news and local guide

Brooklyn, one of the five boroughs of New York City and coextensive with Kings County, lies at the western end of Long Island. The Lenape, whom Europeans often called by the place name Canarsie, lived there when the Dutch arrived. The Dutch West India Company chartered six towns: Gravesend in 1645, settled by English followers of the Anabaptist Lady Deborah Moody; Breuckelen in 1646, named for Breukelen in the Netherlands; Nieuw Amersfoort, later Flatlands, in 1647; Midwout, later Flatbush, and Nieuw Utrecht in 1652; and Boswijck, later Bushwick, in 1661. North America's first tide mill was built by the Dutch in today's Marine Park. The English took New Netherland in 1664, and Kings County came to have one of the highest proportions of enslaved people in the original thirteen colonies.

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On August 27, 1776, the Battle of Long Island, also called the Battle of Brooklyn, was fought there. It was the first major battle after the Declaration of Independence and the largest of the war, and British troops drove Washington's army off the heights. The village of Brooklyn was founded on Brooklyn Heights in 1816. Steam ferries to Fulton Landing made the Heights a commuter town for Wall Street, and the town and village combined as the City of Brooklyn in 1834. Williamsburgh, in Bushwick, became a village in 1827. Brooklyn grew into a large independent city, joined to Manhattan by the Brooklyn Bridge, and in 1898 it was consolidated with Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island to form the modern City of New York. Sources Wikipedia: Brooklyn