King for a Day in Brooklyn New York Author:Jack Maloney In the beginning… The first known European to be in the area of Brooklyn was Giovanni Verrazano who anchored his ship in Gravesend Bay in the early 1500s. The first known to actually go ashore in Brooklyn was Henry Hudson in the year 1609 for a brief exploration of what would become Gravesend. The Dutch soon settled in Manhattan and began buying... more » land in Brooklyn around 1636. They called it Breuckelen after a town in the Netherlands and split it up into six towns. They gave one to an English woman and settled the other five themselves. The Dutch towns were Breuckelen, settled in 1646, New Amersfoort (Flatlands today), Midwout (Flatbush today), New Utrecht and Boswijck (Bushwick today). The English town was called Gravesend and was granted to and settled by Lady Deborah Moody in 1645. It included the sections of Brooklyn now known as Gravesend, Coney Island, Sea Gate, Brighton Beach, Sheepshead Bay and Midwood. The area stretched all the way to what we know today as Marine Park.« less