A QUICK HISTORY OF BROOKLYN
In 1646, the Village of Breuckelen was authorized by the Dutch West India company and became the first municipality in what is now New York state (the predecessors of the cities of Albany and New York were numbers two and three, respectively).  In 1683, almost 20 years after the English kicked out the Dutch (1664), the General Assembly of Freeholders reorganized the governmental structure in all of the province of New York into 12 counties, each of which was a sub-divided into towns.  BROOKLYN was one of the original six towns of Kings County, an original county when the county/town system was established in 1683.  ()ther local area original counties were New York, Richmond, Queens, Westchester and Suffolk.  The Bronx was part of the Westchester County until 1873, when the western Bronx was annexed by New York City/County and 1895, when the Eastern Bronx was annexed as well.  The eastern two -thirds of Queens County seceded and became Nassau County.  In 1899, making Nassau the youngest county in New York State, although the Bronx "paper" county was established in 1914 when the Bronx "seceded" from New York County).
Some additional information about important dates for all the cities, towns and villages that were part of the history of what we now refer to as "BROOKLYN".  The Town of Brooklyn did not have that large a population in 1790, the year of the first federal census.  The Town of Oyster Bay, then in Queens County, had a larger population than did Brooklyn that year.  Yhe Village of Breukelen (1646) preceded City of Nieuw Amsterdam (1653) by some seven years.  Brooklyn/Kings County
has 2 names because it took some 200 years for Brooklyn to annex the other parts of Kings County.  When the city of Brooklyn annexed the City of Williamsburgh and the Town of Bushwick, this area was then known as the eastern district of the city of Brooklyn and Williamsburgh lost its final "H".  The streets in Brooklyn do not line up because each of the 2 cities and 6 towns in Kings County were independent municipalities and purposely decided to create street grids with different naming systems that did not line up with the adjoining city or town.  The Town of Gravesend was the only town where the streets run long north-to-south, all other cities and towns ran their streets long west-to-east.  Gravesend was the only English Town, all the others were Dutch.  South Brooklyn is north of southern Brooklyn because until 1894 the Red Hook area (South Brooklyn) was the southenrmost part of the City of Brooklyn.

  In 1883, the  Brooklyn bridge was built.

CLICK HERE FOR HISTORY OF BROOKLYN BRIDGE

CHECK OUT THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE VIRTUAL CAM