"EDWARDS HEIRS."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 161, 9 July 1932, Page 12

"EDWARDS HEIRS."

SEEKING RAINBOW'S END. AW ARMY OF 50,000 STRONG. MYTHICAL NEW YORK ESTATE. KANSAS CITY (Mo.), May 30, "Edwards heirs" arc still chaeing tho raiubow of a mythical "eight billiondollar estate"' in the heart of New York, ae they were forty years a;;o. In this city 500 men and women arc listed ae "Edwardis heire." In the United States are 0000 of them. In the whole world are 50,000 persons of Edwards lineage, who hope there may be a pot of gold at tho end of tlieir rainbow. There i«s a vast literature about the "Edwards estate" myth. Scores of different organisations of Edwards heirs have been brought into being in the lnet sixty years. Nearly every large city in the country has its society of Edwards heire, and each hari put out voluminous sets of histories, reports and appeals for money, in printed broadsides, folders and pamphlets. Books have been written about it. Troops of lawyers have fattened on It. have given out long legal opinione and reports about it. have filed lawsuits to keep tho thing alive. The story of the Edwards estate hna been told in many a lengthy Court plead,ng and judicial decision.

Three men. in diuerent places and tiiii'.'s, have been arrested by the Government, convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary for using tho mails to defraud Edwards heirs. And ko the etory of the Edwards estate has been embalmed in many ;i dusty old law book. One may read ;ill of this literature, may search the records, may interview no end of Edwardd helm, and not find one slued of definite evidence that there ever wae an Edwarda estate as described, in the heart of New York City. The Edwards heirs have boon warned, thousands of times, that there is nothing to it; that it is all a myth, a legend; that all of tin* va*t expenditure of money and of effort liar! nothing behind it but gossip and fireside talee. That is the amazing , thing about it; that so many thousands of intelligent persons have been eo impressed by thin legend that they have put money into it. Thousands of Edwards heirs have been spending money on it for yeare, and are still doing it. in spite of defeat, exposure and warnings. The very latest appeal for more money to carry on the fight to recover the Edwarde eetute in the heart of New York was printed in Denver, Colorado, on February 20, 1932. It was mailed out by the executive committee of the "International Consolidation of Edwards Heirs." It contains tho following paragraph :— "The claimants of thie estate have been subjected to almost every kind of fraud and scheme that could be conceived of by designing and unscrupulous people. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been wrung from the heirs on one pretext or another in the poet."

Appeal for Money. Then follows a warning against being hoodwinked by importers, and this is followed by an appeal for money. "In order to provide the necessary funde to protect our rights and to carry on this litigation to a final ieeue, we are hereby, in pursuance of the action of our board of directors at their loet annual meeting, calling upon the entire membership for a voluntary assessment of one dollar a month until further notice. Thie monthly remittance ehoulci begin March 1, 1032." One dollar a month is £2 8/ a year. If tho 500 listed heirs in Kansas City should all heed that appeal a fund of £1200 a year would be raised. If the (1000 Edwards heirs in this country should heed it tho fund would be £14,400 a year, and if all the Edwards heirs in tho world should send in the money asked for tho aggregate amount would bo £120,000 a year. The Edwards' heirs case has come down through the last half century almost parallel with the notorious Anncko Jans case, as both were based upon claims to lands in the same district controlled by Trinity Church, in New York. As the Edwards claim ie based largely upon legend, without much substance of fact to sustain it, there are many variations of it, but the most widely accepted version of it is, briefly, as follows: — In the reign of King George 111. of England, there lived in New York, one, Robert Edwards. One story has it that he was a pirate, that he bought large tracts of land in New York City, in Albany, and in the Mohawk Valley of New York; that he had Backs of jewels and gold ho had taken on the higli seas. Another story ia that he was a merchant who had his own ships on the seas in trade with foreign countries. Cut the traditions all agreo that when King George 111. got into a war, Robert Edwards ttirned his ehips into privateers and helped his King win the war. For this service, the legend says, the King gave- Edwards a grant of land in New York City. Some legends place this tract at 62 acres, others say it was 77 acres, and still others put It at 100 acres. Then tho Revolutionary War came on and Edwards, being a Royalist, leased his land in New York for 09 years to Trinity Church and went to London and died there, without an heir or a will. This land, which gossip snye he leased to Trinity Church, is the "Edwards Estate," which so many Edwards heirs have been fighting to recover ever since 1876, when the 00-year lease to Trinity Church is said to have expired. All the lawsuits brought by the Edwards heirs to recover this land have been against tho Trinity Church Corporation. It may be interesting, at this point, to sketcii briefly the story of Trinity Church, tho most romantic church in America, and the richest church in the world, which, the Edwards heirs assert, is wrongfully withholding this vast estate from them.

Trinity Church Gets Grant. In 1697, that is, 235 years ago, when New York was an English colony, William and Mary, King and Queen of England, granted a charter for an Episcopal Church in the village of iXew York, and gave some land, in an old graveyard, on which the church was to bo built. The first Trinity Church was opened the following year. To support this church the King and Queen gave a tract of land, the church to have the income from it for all time. New York was then a village of only 3000 people and the land given to Trinity was mostly cow pasture, garden plots and swamp. Seventy-eight years later the first Trinity Church burned. Another one was built on the same site, and twelve years later it was torn down and a new one built, which was used for sixty years and then torn down ns unsafe, and the present Trinity Church was built 07 years ago.

By this time New York village had become a groat city. Old Trinity and its little graveyard wore surrounded, not by small houses and gardens, but by miles of streets lined with huge business structures. Trinity had reached out and leased other lands, and, the Edwards heirs declare, it acquired other lands simply by "grabbing" or "squatting , * on them. Then panic the skyscraper ago, and I to-day one may look down the narrow j canyon of Wall Street, "the street of gold," and sen Trinity Church, its tail spire overshadowed by towering buildj ings, many of which pay rent to Trinity I Church. The Edwards heirs are not claiming Trinity Church, or its graveyard. But, they e'ay, they are rightful heirs to at least 02 acres of land, covered closely with buildings, worth in the abrogate eight billion dollars. Some of this land j has been sold over and over again. From | a small part of it Trinity Church collects rents. But, Edwards heirs say, ! Trinity is liable to them for all of that land. There is no proof that this particular Robert Edwards ever lived. Xo title has ever been found to land | ill Trinity district that was ever owned by a Robert Edwards. Xo lease, nor any record of one, has ever been found by which Trinity Church acquired, land from Robert Edwards.— j X.A.X.A. j