Dutch Deed Fetches More Than a Handful of Beads - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog

I wonder if it was surveyed by Jacques Cortelyou, a French surveyor hired by the Dutch in the cited first survey of Brooklyn, a street in downtown Brooklyn (narrowly voted to join the rest of the city in consolidation with the “boroughs”) named after them. A more recent descendant George B. Cortelyou held Cabinet posts under President’s William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, the last position Postmaster General, and became one of the famous (along with singer/writer Harry Chapin) residents of Huntington, NY on Long Island, once also a very old, but English settlement (Ashford in the time of Cromwell). To think that the once Chairman of the Republican Party started out teaching shorthand in New York City! The National Archives says he was also the first White House Press Secretary inviting the press into the White House and historians feel his influence has been overlooked.