Fire Island’s Title Is Settled in Court -- Millions Involve
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Title Fire Island’s Title Is Settled in Court -- Millions Involve Date 14 Aug 1921 Date Viewed 23 Feb 2025 Page 8 Periodical Brooklyn Eagle Place Brooklyn, NY Source Type Newspaper URL https://www.newspapers.com/article/brooklyn-eagle-furman-family-claim-to-fi/166515840/ Source ID S1541 Text FIRE ISLAND'S TITLE IS SETTLED IN COURT; MILLIONS INVOLVED Justice Squiers Upholds the Green-Sammis Partition Into 78 Parcels. decision rendered last week by Justice Arnon L. Squiers dismissing the complaint in a suit brought by Nettie F. Valentine, Joel N. Furman and County Judge George H.
Furman against the Fire Island Beach Development Company, in which the plaintiffs claimed ownership in the property of the defendant, fixes for all time the title not only of the Fire Island Beach Development Company tract but confirms the title of thousands of other owners of Fire Island Beach, which is about 18 miles in length. The property involved includes not only the large and prosperous incorporated villages of Saltaire, Point 'Woods and Ocean Beach, with 150 to 200 houses each, ranging in value from $5,000 to $20,000, provided with water, electricity, paved sidewalks and other improvements, connected by established ferries with. Bayshore and Patchogue, but it includes also other settlements such as Stay Awhile and Cherry Grove and others, and hundreds of detached houses scattered along the beach. The property involved is valued at several millions of dollars. Fire Island State Park is a part of the beach, a a the United State lighthouse at the westerly end of the island.
The beach has been involved in 20 different suits in the past few years. In the case of Steel against Norton, Justice W. T. Kell rendered a decision in which he upheld the present owners. But this decision did not affect the claim of the Valentines and Furmans, who alleged that their ancestors were lawful claimants of considerable portions of the property.
Prior to 1871, David S. S. Sammis of Babylon and his associates had the acmajority of shares in beach. He had a hotel there and there quired a were some fishing companies also that had establishments on the property. In 1871 a Green partition vs.
Sammis, in which suit was brought, entitled who had any record title on the any one island were made a party. This action extended over seven or eight in 1878 there was an actual of the island and a map was years, and partition filed in the County Clerk's office. the judgments recorded in Under the action the island was divided into and these parcels were set 78 parcels apart to the individuals further were who parties in the suit and all the claimants were shut out under terms of the decree of the court. Mrs. Furman, in the original complaint in the suit of Green against Sammis, had been made a party defendant, but she had never been served with a summons, and in 1873, I by order of the court, she was struck out of the action on the ground that she had no interest in the' property.
The contention in the present suit was that because Mrs. Furman had been made a party in the original complaint, in the suit of Green against Sammis, she was not an unknown party within the meaning of the . statute and could not be proceeded' against as such by advertisement. Justice Squiers' decision handed down last week sweeps contention aside and finally determines that the partition judgment in Green against Sammis where the .78 parcels were allocated, was properly entered and cut off all persons who might have unrecorded deeds to interests in the beach and should be a final settlement, it is said, of all d'sputed claims in respect to Fire Island from end to end..Linked to
Individuals: 1FURMAN, Nettie
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