LETTER DISPUTING OWNERSHIP OF LAND IN WIDENING OF WALL STREET
Holographic letter dated October 10, 1855 by Henry B. Brewster of Salem, Massachusetts, regarding a dispute over valuable property in New York City which the writer claims was taken by the city to widen Wall Street without properly compensating the landowners, including his wife.
Brewster does not provide his wife's name in the letter. However, he states that she is among the heirs of the Old Dutch Church property in New York. Located at Nassau Street and Cedar Street, the church was built in 1726 and was once central to the lives of colonial New Yorkers. During the Revolutionary War, the occupying British turned it into a prison and after they retreated, the church languished for years and was permanently closed in 1844. With the federal standardization of postal rates in 1845, New York needed a central post office, so the U.S. government leased, and later purchased, the old church and transformed it into New York's main postal facility. The city quickly outgrew this space, the building was torn down, and replaced with the Mutual Life Insurance Building in 1882, which was also demolished. The property is now part of One Chase Manhattan Plaza, a 60-story skyscraper in the heart of the financial district.
In this two-page letter, written on a single sheet of blue paper (roughly 8" x 13"), Brewster claims the old church property was part of a 14-acre tract of land that was leased and should have reverted back to the heirs after the lease expired. The issue was known to city officials, who advertised for heirs during a Wall Street widening project. "Surveys and boundaries were made and taken by Soloman Purdy of Middletown, N.Y. and all the papers and certified copies, duly signed and sealed, were delivered by him to his grandchildren telling them the nature and character of these documents," Brewster wrote. The property, according to Brewster, was leased from John Merrit and it was passed on to his daughter, Ruth Merrit. "Any legal gentleman versed in searching out old leases have enough here to enable them to enter upon the work of investigation, and I now give notice it is my purpose to prosecute this matter."
Very little information is known about this matter or about the letter writer. According to ancestry records, Henry Brewster, born in 1806, was living in Salem and married to Harriet Brewster, born in 1811. Item #77208
Price: $250.00