Ignoring the preceding Dutch claim to the territory, England's King Charles II gave the area from Connecticut to Delaware to the duke of York, his brother, and enforced the claim with a British fleet in 1664.

The King's Highway later became the main thoroughfare into Long Island's Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk Counties. In 1816, Brooklyn was incorporated as a village, and Fulton Street would become a prime commercial address. By 1840, Brooklyn had won the passage of legislature allowing it to become a city, with a population of some 30,000 souls.

The Borough of Brooklyn became more cosmopolitan during the 1830s through the 60s, with the influx of southern Irish immigrants, followed by Germans, Poles, Slavs, Scandanavians, and Italians by the turn of the century. Large influxes of African Americans entered Brooklyn from the South in the nineteenth century as well, with a second migration occurring in the mid-twentieth century in the years between the World Wars.

Brooklyn is full of history, both local and national, and the names of her neighborhoods reflect her many peoples.

Weeksville, named for James Weeks, a black stevedore formerly of Virginia, dates from 1838, when Weeks bought land there eleven years after the state of New York legally abolished slavery. Of the original community, surrounded by what is now Crown Heights (formerly known as Crow Hill), only four houses remain, but it was the site of one of the earliest free black communities in the nation. Among its contributions of leading citizenry was Susan McKinney Stewart, New York's first black female physician, born there in 1847.

Coney Island, named by the Dutch for the many rabbits (konijn) found there, is on Brooklyn's south shore. Cobble Hill, edging into downtown Brooklyn, is now one of the largest Arab communities in the nation, and Arab Jews, Christians, and Muslims live side by side as they have in their native homelands for centuries. The State Street Mosque, founded by African American religious leader Sheikh Daoud in the early twentieth century, is one of the oldest masajid, or mosques, in the country.

Bushwick (Boswijck, or Town of the Woods) and Flatbush (Vlache Bos, or Wood Plain) were also both settled by the Dutch, as were Bergen Beach (named for Hans Bergen) and Dyker Heights, possibly named for the Van Dykes, or for the famous dikes built in marshlands to restain the sea or rivers.

Vinegar Hill was settled by Irish immigrants who worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, on Brooklyn's western, East River shore.

Canarsie, named for the Canarsee Indians, is a part of the flatlands in south central Brooklyn, and Gowanus, named for the Gouwane Indians, is now largely a commercial district and home to the Gowanus Expressway that connects the Battery Tunnel and the southerly Belt Parkway, which connects Brooklyn's south shore to Long Island's Southern Parkway, ultimately leading to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the north shore, by way of the Cross Island Parkway.

Park Slope, adjacent to the pastoral Prospect Park, developed out of hills valleys, and marshes. Bay Ridge, originally named Yellow Hook because of the clay found there, was renamed in 1853 after an outbreak of yellow fever. Likewise, the red clay found in the riverside area in the west of Brooklyn gave way to Red Hook, and Sheepshead Bay was named after the once plentiful fish caught there.

English roots are obvious in some of the names. Bath Beach and Brighton Beach evoke memories of the older communities of those names "across the Pond." Named for the Duke of Bedford in the 17th century, Bedford merged with Stuyvesant, so named to honor the Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam, and became Bedford Stuyvesant, home of the renowned Billie Holiday Theater and Concord Baptist Church, the celebrated congregation numbering more than 12,000 and the largest black congregation in the land. Windsor Terrace is the result of someone's fond memory of Windsor Castle, or of the family name of the British Royal clan.

New York's Governor De Witt Clinton is the namesake of Clinton Hill, which today remains an upscale neighborhood of mansions and stately townhomes. Carroll Gardens is named after Charles Carroll of Maryland, who signed the Declaration of Independence (though he was never a resident), and the Revolutionary War general Nathaniel Greene gave his name to Fort Greene. The world's tallest Doric Column stands in Ft. Greene Park, on the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, marking a tomb dating from Revolutionary times.

A Connecticut businessman named John Pitkin built East New York in 1835, and the central artery of that section, Pitkin Avenue, reflects his contribution to this day. Just west of East New York sits Brownsville, developed by real estate entrepreneur Charles S. Brown, was founded a few years later.

Egbert and Henry Benson were landowners who settled Bensonhurst, and were statesment durting the Revolutionary period. Crow Hill became Crown Heights, and Clover Hill became Brooklyn Heights, situated on a bluff rising high above the East River and becoming one of the city's first suburbs.

The ironclad Union ship, the Monitor, was built in the industrial Brooklyn community of Greenpoint. The world-famous Brooklyn Bridge, designed in 1865 by John A. Roebling, ultimately led to the end of Brooklyn's independence, and it became a borough among five in Greater New York on New Year's Day, 1898. For more historical information on the neighborhoods and history of Brooklyn, please read Brooklyn: People and Places, Past and Present (Gardner, P and Glueck, G.), ©1991 Harry N.Abrams, Inc.: New York.