The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-01-15

Q popular resort. It was said that
 Washington slept there previous to the
 battle of Long Island. Farmers bring ing their produce to the New York mar
 ket put up there and the host provid-
 ed fodder for man and beast" Cid con Tooker was evidently a man of grit and willing to back his judgment with all he possessed. One afternoon Took ! CT and Kolyer (who was a bachelor)
 played. The luck was running against Tooker. who had lost all his money. and he wagered -four acres of wood lands, which he had bought from John Ryerson. It wasn't very valuable land. worth in those days not more than $50: but that was a large sum. Neither tradition nor history contains any evi- dence as to the kind of card game the two men played nor the kind of hands they held. Tooker lost. though. and from that day the land was known as Kolyers. There was no record of any transfer of the land in due legal form, although some time afterward Kolyer conveyed a small part of it to the Brooklyn and Jamaica Turnpike Com pany to be used as a gravel pit. Every person referred to the land as Kolyer's, however. One day in 1929 Kolyer went fishing in Jamaica Bay and lost his life. His body was found. He had left wul, however, in the inventory of which he claimed that he owned about three and half acres of woodland
 in Brooklyn. valued al $50. but there was no description of the land.
 The land In question was merely wood lot, unfenced and apparently un- claimed although cid men twenty years | ago said they remembered some of Kol- yer's heirs cutting wood upon 1t, and claiming that they had right to 1t. No taxes were paid, though, and the | city of Brooklyn finally sold it and gave q tax lease. The purchaser in 1 turn sold 1t to William J. Furman. and | he in turn gave quit claim to Radde & Sackman who were at that time buy ing up all the wood lots in New Bed- ford. or New Brooklyn. It passed out of Radde & Sackman's hands. until about twenty years ago the Title Guar antee Company was asked to search the title and give a policy. The search CT struck q snag in the title when he came to the tax sales. Who owned 1t before that time was the question, and then the Kolyer heirs were discovered
 There were hundreds of them scattered all over the country. As there was no record of any owner previous to Kolyer the lawyers took 1t for granted that he was the frst-after the Indians ana the Dutch and English. The company ob- tained from some of the heirs quit claims. and then the courts ordered partition sale. The company in 1858 in. sured the title.
 Edward R. Vollmer. lawyer. resid- ing in East New York. but who was brought up in the office of Ray Ham ilton in New York, whose mother pur- chased four houses on the land former Iy owned by Kolyer, examined the title and came to the same snag as. the ex- aminers for the title company. He was not satisfied with that and believed that some records were missing. He made further search and discovered that the land had once been included in John Ryerson's Hunteriy farm, which began on the old HunterAy road. in the vi- cinity of Reid Avenue. and ran from there east to the old patent line of Brooklyn in the neishborhood Of Broad way. The westerly portion of the land was cultivated, but the easterIy por- ton was woodland On the examination of the records in the Surrogate's
 Court MT. Vollmer found that Jacob Ryersor devised the property in 1901 to his three sons, describing 1t as the farm on which now live in New Bed ford" It was necessary to do much digging into old records and deeds that had not been recorded. Some of these Mir. Vollmer found in an old Dutch farm house in new lots, now occupied by descendant of the Ryersons. Mir. Vollmer found, too that the portion of land in question had been transferred to Gideon Tooker. The heirs of Tooker were hunted up and the title attacked in the courts, The case went to the