the debt. The sales-maps and accounts are on file in the comptroller's office, and with the comptroller's reports and contemporaneous records of the common council, constitute the chief material for continuing this account to the present time.

The story of the sales between those already described and those by the commissioners is soon told, so far as concerns the larger blocks to which this account is confined. Few and, except in one case, unimportant, they are here referred to only that a complete view may be had of the disposal of the parcels to which they belong. The special circumstances attending each sale have not been inquired into, so that a tabu lar statement merely is subjoined. It will at least go to show that the city record of transactions in common land is complete and accounts fully and properly for all there was to dispose o

1840. A Peck slip lot, west corner of Front street, fiftyfive by twenty-five, to lessee, eight thousand dollars. It had been leased in 1828 for twenty-one years at three hundred and seventy-five dollars yearly.

1841. At Albany basin, a strip seventy-eight feet deep, in west front of the lots sold in 1818, forty-six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars.

1842. A Collect lot, No. 1, twenty-five by ninety, corner of Elm and Leonard streets, four thousand eight hundred dollars. The lot fifty feet by forty on southwest corner opposite sold in 1.805 for six hundred dollars.

1842. The first of a hitherto intact block of twenty-five lots bounded by King, Charlton, Washington and West streets. It had been reserved in granting the water lots, and was the fifth block along the North river, which the corporation had

1 To the courtesy of Comptroller Myers, I am indebted for the opportunity of ample access to the maps and records in his office.

2 Map XI.

3 Map VIII.

filled in for sale.1 It was leased in 1837 for ten years at four thousand and fifty dollars annually. Price of the one lot, thirty feet by seventy, five thousand six hundred dollars.

1842. Lower commons, lot 20, as on Map XIV., three thousand five hundred dollars.

1843. Lower commons, lot 6, eight thousand five hundred dollars. Leased in 1825 for twenty-one years at five hundred dollars yearly.

This brings us to the sales by the commissioners of the sinking fund.

1 Map XIII.

CHAPTER III.

ENCROACHMENTS.

In the history of municipal land ownership, as is well known, encroachments are conspicuous. To what extent have they been made on Manhattan Island? The limiting words of the Charter of 1686 are "all vacant, waste and unpatented lands." It was from the start the practice of the common council in any case of suspected encroachment to require a view of the patent. under which the land was held, and to claim so much as it did not cover to be the property of the city. Several instances have already been noted where claimants of ground between low and high water were summoned to show title by their patents. So it was with the upland. In the case of a tract at the junction of the Post and Bloomingdale roads, shown on Goerck's map as belonging to Casper Semler, the patent under which it was held was demanded as late as 1757, and on its appearing that the patent gave one hundred rods along the Post road and fifty rods. back, while by an error of an early surveyor fifty rods had been taken on the road, and one hundred rods back, a settlement was entered on the minutes of the common council whereby the occupant retained his ground as it was, save a gore which he gave up not to overrun the Bloomingdale road, receiving an equivalent gore in return.

By laying down correctly the original patents, up to 1686, the lines of the city's property could be accurately determined. This, however, was not practicable below Wall street, as Valentine's attempt has shown. From Wall street

1 Map V.

as far north as the junction of the Post and Bloomingdale roads, except the shore, the common council seem not to have succeeded in their attempts to reclaim ground already in occupancy, and even that which they gave to Sir Peter Warren on Broadway, though unoccupied, was contested by an adjacent owner. Above the junction to the Harlem line the patents are large and well defined, and there can be little doubt what the city ought to have received under the Charter, admitting its right, which does not seem to have been gainsaid, to all unpatented land. On the east the Harlem line, as set forth in the Nichols patent of 1666, is a definite boundary. The controversery with Harlem freeholders over their indefinite right of commonage west of it, and its outcome, have already been noted. Beginning at the Harlem line, the western boundary of the commons is for some distance the eastern line of Theunis Ides' land, run in 1690, the town of Harlem paying for part of the survey. This line extended from One hundred and seventh to Eighty-ninth street, about half way between Seventh and Eighth avenues. It does not seem to have been questioned by the city of New York, though I find no mention of the patent under which it was held.

South of Ide's land a single patent extends to Thirty-ninth street, on the river to Forty-second, "from the said river stretching in depth and breadth two hundred and fifty rods." A line at all points two hundred and fifty rods inland from Hudson high water mark, as shown in Randel's maps, would fall half a block on an average short of the commons line, as held by the city, from Eighty-ninth to Seventy-first streets, and indicates an encroachment of that extent. From Seventyfirst to Sixty-fourth streets the two lines would nearly coincide. From Sixty-fourth to Fifty-fifth the apparent encroachment would be about one block or eight hundred feet against the city, and a block and a half against the city from Fifty-fifth to Forty-third street. Below Forty-third street the

1 Map II. Compare Map XVI.

Bloomingdale road is the actual and apparently the true line of the commons, This calculation would show a possible encroachment of say one hundred and eighty-five acres into the commons on the west, south of Theunis Ide's land. The common council does not seem to have been aware that two miles and a half along the Hudson and bordering the commons were held under the same patent, but appears to have taken contemporaneous deeds as conclusive. Thus there is record of an agreement in 1749 with Oliver De Lancy, holder or coholder under the patent through several mesne conveyances of the tract west of the commons from Fifty-seventh to Sixtyeighth streets, whereby he is to have his land surveyed and pay three pounds an acre for any he may possess that properly belongs to the commons. A committee made the survey and the deed was ordered, though it does not seem to have passed, but no mention was made of an original patent.

On the east side, the line of the commons for the greater part of its length was kept quite rigorously up to the true line of the patents. Tuttle's maps show scarcely any discrepancy from Seventy-eighth street, where the commons ranging along the Harlem line would first touch the rear of the East river patents, as far as Sixty-seventh street. From Sixty-sixth to Forty-eighth street they indicate an encroachment varying from one hundred and fifty to five hundred feet. Below Fortyeighth street to the Bloomingdale road, the old post road is either approximately or exactly the limit of the patents, and there is no encroachment beyond it. Minutes of controversies

1 The early deeds cite the patent and give the distance from the river as two hun. dred and fifty rods. Joseph Haynes, who held the southmost fifth of the patent at his death in 1763, occupied only two hundred and fifty rods, or to the Bloomingdale road, from Thirty-ninth to Forty-ninth streets, and he had his land surveyed by the city surveyor in 1760. See 42 Conveyances, p. 49. For the tract north of him to the De Lancy line, deeds recorded in 1727 and 1761 give two hundred and fifty rods only. See "Tuttle's Abstract of Farm Titles in the City of New York," p. 200 and p. 329. Tuttle is mistaken in saying, p. 46, that the deed to Joseph Haynes gives distances which would extend his tract east of the Bloomingdale road. See 42 Conveyances, p. 27.