Some of the persons indicted, in connection with others who felt aggrieved and feared that they also might be placed in a similar unpleasant position, applied to the Colonial Legislature, and secured the passage of a law on the 27th of July, 1721, "to continue the common road or King's highway from the ferry toward the Town of Breuckland, on the Island of Nassau, in the Province of New York." The preamble was as follows: "Whereas, Several of the inhabitants on the ferry on the Island of Nassau, by their petition, preferred to the General Assembly, by setting forth that they have been molested by persecutions, occasioned by the contrivance and instigations of ill and disaffected persons, to the neighborhood, who would encroach upon the buildings and fences that have been made many years, alledging the road was not wide enough, to the great damage of several of the old inhabitants, on the said ferry, the said road as it now is, has been so for sixty years past without any complaint either of the inhabitants or travellers." The remaining sections of the law established the road "forever," as it then existed, from the ferry upward to the town of Breuckland, as far as the swinging gate of John Rapalje, just above the property belonging to James Harding. The unwillingness of the early settlers to part with their land, when land was so cheap, accounts in a great measure for our present narrow and crooked street. These early settlers, in their opposition to the widening of the street, might have desired to preserve some favorite fruit or shade tree. It has been given as a reason why Broadway, New York, makes a turn or diverges at Grace Church, that a Dutchman had a favorite cherry tree on the line of the thoroughfare as proposed, and, if the street was continued in a direct line, the tree would have felt the woodman's axe. Another provision of this enactment was the privilege it gave that, if a majority of the inhabitants of the town should "adjudge that part of the road near to the ferry to be too narrow and inconvenient," they could take proceedings to have it widened. In order to secure this improvement, "they might cause the sheriff to summon a jury of twelve men to appraise the value of land to be taken, and the amount of value so ascertained should be levied upon the towne, and collected and paid to the owners of the land so appropriated to street purpose." This provision of the law was never enforced. The people seemed to rest content with their narrow, winding, crooked lane, which in those days resembled a cow-path. The "swinging gate" referred to, is said to have been located on the rise of the hill at or near the junction of Sands and Fulton streets. The commissioners of highways laid out another important highway or road on the 28th of March, 1704. It led to the public landing place at the mills of Nehemiah Denton at Gowanus. The record of this road is as follows:--