Families continue their fight to claim a slice of the Big Apple
IT’S a claim you may have heard once or twice over the years and it goes like this: there are Welsh people alive today who are the real owners of a huge chunk of downtown Manhattan that is worth hundreds of billions of pounds.
Thousands of families across the globe believe they are entitled to 77 acres of the world’s most expensive real estate – land they claim is theirs because of blood links to a Welsh pirate named Robert Edwards.
He was said to have been granted the land by Queen Anne in the 18th century for fighting the Spanish – or the French, depending on what you read.
Since the estate includes Wall Street, Broadway, the Woolworth Building, the former Wanamaker’s department store – now Macy’s – and a forest of corporate towers it is worth hundreds of billions of pounds.
The Parry family from Port Talbot are among those who believe they are due their slice of the Big Apple.
“My father’s great-grandmother was an Edwards and her father was Nicholas Edwards. His father was John Edwards and they just passed the story down,” mum-of-three and grandmother-of-four Lorraine Parry said.
The story goes that seafarer Robert Edwards had no immediate use for the land. In 1778, a 99-year lease on the plot was given to brothers John and George Cruger.
According to a copy of the deeds held in Glamorgan Archives the lease, for “77 acres, three rods and two perches”, was to run from “a stake set in the ground at high water mark near Beatavers Kittleje”.
Then it ran 1,000ft east along Prince Street before zig-zagging north-west across “Old Jan’s land” and 2,500ft along Christopher Street.
From there it went to the “high water mark 547ft” before heading south along the Hudson “following the line of high water mark, 2,276ft to the point and place of the beginning”.
The annual rent was £1,000 and a peppercorn – not bad considering people now pay more each month for a shoebox-size flat in London.
“At the expiration of the 99-yearlease, said land together with all such improvements shall revert to my living heirs, which will be descendants of my brothers and sisters,” the deed says.
But Lower Manhattan ended up in the hands of New York’s Trinity Church – still one of the city’s biggest landowners.
And it has been said the Crugers were wardens of Trinity Church.
A copy of the lease was first discovered on the death of John Wanamaker – owner of Wanamaker’s.
It was thought he owned the store’s building. But his lawyers found he didn’t and discovered copies of Robert Edwards’ papers in a vault. They had seemingly lain undisturbed for half a century.
The original deeds have never been located. They would more than likely be required in any court case.
Lorraine’s grandfather, David Needs, believed he was entitled to his cut after discovering John Edwards, one of the brothers mentioned on the lease, was his greatgrandfather.
“My grandfather went over to the US in the 1940s and he believed in it,” Lorraine said. “I think there is something in it. But I don’t think anything will come of it because there is too much involved.
“But when you get into it it’s very interesting.”
David established that Robert Edwards emigrated from Pontygwaith to New York and produced documentation that the land leased to the Crugers had originally been given to Edwards “for aid in fighting France at sea”.
In 1947 David and 400 others staked their claim against Trinity Church. Its rector, a Dr FS Fleming, was reported as welcoming the attempt, saying: “Fantastic!”
He “politely but a little wearily” told one newspaper the church was the oldest in New York having been established in 1698.
“The church was founded on two original direct grants from King William III and Queen Anne,” he said.
“There were two original properties – the ‘King’s Farm’ and the ‘Queen’s Farm.’
“These properties were granted directly on Trinity. There is no question about the Edwards’ claim. The courts have said they have no foundation.”
David and 400 others were undeterred. They wanted the land, then estimated to be worth $800,000,000.
More than 250 people, believing themselves to be Edwards’ descendants, crammed into a meeting in a Port Talbot hotel room.
The gathered families – Edwards, Thomas, Evans and Needs – passed a motion.
“We the descendants of the Edwards family resolve to pursue this claim with all the means and resources at our disposal,” it said.
David spent all the compensation he received from an accident to his hand trying to claim what he believed was his birthright. He did not succeed. In 1955 Trinity published a leaflet called “Facts in Connection With the Title of Trinity Church to Its Property Acquired by Royal Grants”.
It stated the church had a record of successfully defending its claims to lower Manhattan in the courts stretching back to the mid-19th century.
In 1994 spokesman Steve McCoy said they were contacted by people claiming to own the land “all the time”.
“This has been going on for 160 years,” he said.
Trinity Church has given Lorraine’s husband, Phillip, short shrift in his attempts pursue the claims.
“I’ve written to Trinity church in America,” he said.
“I think they do not want to give too much information away but under freedom of information they should.
“It has been very, very difficult to get through to them and you can understand why.”
The church’s archivist, Gwynedd Cannan, did write to retired steel worker Phillip on March 28, 2002. “Trinity continues to own property in downtown Manhattan, which consists of a portion of a tract of land which was granted to the church by Queen Anne of England in 1705, when New York was a crown colony, as an endowment for the support of the church and its activities,” Ms Cannan said.
“This property was granted to the church outright. Over the years numerous court decisions have upheld Trinity Church’s ownership and established conclusively that no-one else holds any interest in the property.”
Brits have been warned against trying to claim the land for decades.
Detective Story Magazine wrote an article headlined “Edwards estate a myth” on September 5, 1925.
On October 9 the same year, The Sun – not Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid – wrote that the Foreign Office was warning people to “scorn the wiles of American swindlers.”
“Americans are now circularizing Great Britain in an effort to obtain money to press claims on the estates,” the paper said.
The year before, attorney Charles C Daniels declined to press the claims of Edwards’ heirs because he did not want to be responsible for “the separation of people from their money for long and expensive litigation in the ultimate outcome for which he had no confidence”.
In March 1928, the New York Times reported a Joel F Webb was given a three-year suspended sentence for defrauding alleged heirs and there were reports of another swindle in 1958.
And in the mid-1990s, a Pennsylvania Association of Edwards Heirs campaign stalled after an internal dispute saw court action against some members accused of embezzling the group’s funds.
On September 25, 1999, The Independent reported that a Pittsburgh court had ruled the organisation was defrauded.
Before that finding the organisation’s lawyer, John Smarto, wrote to journalist Philip Berrill to tell him about the case, which revolved around the misappropriation of $1.5m.
He added: “The struggle of the Edwards saga continues. From our perspective, however, we continue to conduct research on the estate portion of the case with the hope that we can re-establish the proper political inquiry to uncover the answers to this two-century-old story.”