Brooklyn's south shore — Gravesend to the Rockaways
Gravesend, Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach, Seaside, Belle Harbor. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.
Whose archive this ground was
| Years | Who held it | Whose archive that means |
|---|---|---|
| 1500–1609 | Before registers | no registers survive Before registers. |
| 1609–1664 | New Netherland — Gravesend | Nationaal Archief · FamilySearch Henry Hudson's Half Moon is believed to have made the first European landing at Coney Island in autumn 1609, and the Dutch claimed the land as New Netherland. Governor Kieft granted Lady Deborah Moody and English settlers a patent on 19 December 1645 (some sources give 1643); Gravesend was the only English-chartered town in what became Kings County. The town bought Coney Island from the Lenape in 1654. |
| 1664–1776 | English Kings County | The National Archives — Discovery · FamilySearch |
| 1776–1894 | United States — Town of Gravesend, Kings County | National Archives Catalog (NARA) · FamilySearch · Ancestry British and German troops landed at Gravesend Bay in August 1776, leading to the Battle of Long Island. Gravesend Race Track opened on 26 August 1886, and Sheepshead Bay and Brighton Beach also had race tracks. |
| 1894–1898 | City of Brooklyn | National Archives Catalog (NARA) · FamilySearch The City of Brooklyn annexed Gravesend and Coney Island in 1894. |
| 1898–2026 | City of New York — Brooklyn and Queens | Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation · National Archives Catalog (NARA) · FamilySearch · Ancestry Brooklyn became part of New York City in 1898. |
The rings are approximate — deliberately. They exist to shade which filing system a place fell under, not to adjudicate a border. A place near a ring's edge should be checked against both neighbours.
See the whole span, 1500–2026, on the map →
The map takes a range, and a range that crosses one of the rows above is where records get lost: the family never moved, and the archive on the far side of the handover will tell you it holds nothing.