Conspiracy theories can take hold and last for a very long time.

This scenario created many problems for people researching their genealogy. I believe many lineages were altered to line up with potential participation in these lawsuits.

On November 20, 1642, William Kieft, then, Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam, made an original grant of 77 acres of Manhattan Island in New Amsterdam to Thomas Hael. Thomas Hael’s only daughter Elizabeth, married “The Old Ship Master”, Captain Thomas Nathaniel Edwards. Thomas Hael died in 1669, but on November 6, 1674 the title of the land was transferred to Thomas Edwards by Edward Andros, the Colonial Governor of New York. In 1673, Governor Lovelace confirmed the Edwards land title.

Robert Edwards was born on February 14, 1715. He became a captain in the British Royal Navy. He used his three eighths bounty from the capture of a Spanish galleon as a privateer for the Crown of England to purchase 80 acres of Manhattan Island around 1752. Robert leased the 77 acres to John and George Cruger and the 80 acres to Aaron Burr for 99 years. In 1778, John and George Cruger and Aaron Burr, leased the land to the Trinity Church Corporation.

On his return to England in 1788 his ship was caught in a storm and sank with all soles. With no wife or children, his property was willed to his siblings.

Another challenger to the land began in the 1780s, the church’s claim on 62 acres of Queen Anne’s 1705 grant was contested in the courts by descendants of a 17th-century Dutchwoman, Anneke Jans Bogardus, who, it was claimed, held original title to that property. The basis of the lawsuits was that only five of Bogardus’ six heirs had conveyed the land to the English crown in 1671. Numerous times over the course of six decades, the claimants asserted themselves in court, losing each time. The attempt was even revived in the 20th century.
The church still owns 14 prime acres of Manhattan real estate.