Descendants of a 1640s settler sued Trinity Church for downtown Manhattan, and courts ruled the church's 230 years of possession beat their claim

In 1705 Queen Anne granted Trinity Church the King's Farm on the west side of lower Manhattan. Claimants have tried to take it back for 240 years. From the 1780s descendants of Anneke Jans Bogardus sued, arguing that only five of her six heirs had conveyed the land to the Crown in 1671; they lost each time. In 1933 British subjects from England, Canada and New Zealand, led by plaintiffs named Edwards, sued in federal court. They said a tract between Christopher and Charlton streets had been granted in 1642 to their ancestor Thomas Hall and that the church took it without right. On 20 June 1933 Judge Patterson dismissed the suit for laches. On 3 June 1935 the Second Circuit held the claim barred by the statute of limitations, the church having held the land since at least 1777. A separate legend says the privateer Robert Edwards leased 77 acres to the Cruger brothers on a 99-year lease that expired in 1877^†. A Pennsylvania Association of Edwards Heirs raised about $1.5 million from members^†. In 1994 it said the money sat in a $27 billion Chase Manhattan account, which the bank denied^†. An embezzlement case over the fund was tried in federal court in Pittsburgh in 1999^†. Trinity Church still owns large parts of the land in 2026.