Robert Edwards (pirate)

Robert Edwards (supposedly died c.1738)[1] was a Welsh buccaneer who descendants claim was given 77 acres (310,000 m2) of largely unsettled Manhattan by Queen Anne of the Kingdom of Great Britain for his services in disrupting Spanish sea lanes.

The legend has since proved persistent, and indeed some high-profile claims of rightful ownership to the fortune, now estimated to be worth around 650 billion dollars.

The most recent of these was a claim from Cleoma Foore, whose research led to the foundation of the Pennsylvania Association of Edwards Heirs, a body funded by donations in a bid to finally prove that they were entitled to the vast fortune through direct ancestry.

Indeed, the end result was an embezzlement case tried at the federal court in Pittsburgh before Chief Judge Donald E. Ziegler in 1999.

Williamson owned a pew in Trinity Church and was eventually imprisoned for harassing its rector Morgan Dix with a weeks-long prank.