Wild West-era property grants to some of the Bay Area’s original land barons are playing a role in Google’s efforts to transform a big stretch of downtown San Jose into an urban village for a modern era.

Frederick Billings, Archibald Peachy, Henry Naglee and August Schwall bought hundreds of acres in and near downtown San Jose sometime around 1865 — including the area of Google’s proposed transit village near Diridon station — according to passages tucked away in legal papers on file with the Santa Clara County Superior Court.

These four men might not exactly be household names. Yet their vast holdings in the South Bay of the 19th century have survived into the downtown San Jose of 2022 as parcel remnants.

Google, in a process that has been going on for several months, has tracked down at least 37 people who are believed to be descendants of the four land barons.

Why would the tech titan attempt to undertake a painstaking genealogy search that stretches back 157 years?Google and the city of San Jose are working together to attempt to “quiet” the title to four properties to ensure that the parcel remnants are all transferred by court order to the tech company and the municipality — and to make it crystal clear that the owners of the sites are either the search giant or the city.

Today, property ownership generally ends at the curb, with the government owning sidewalks and streets. But the parcels in question involve roadways because, back when the land grants occurred, property ownership sometimes extended into what became streets. Google and the city are planning to shift, alter or pave over some of the streets in question for the project and need to obtain clear ownership first.

The Downtown West neighborhood Google is creating is expected to consist of office buildings, homes, shops, restaurants, hotels, open community spaces and more near the Diridon train station and the SAP Center where the tech giant could employ up to 25,000 people. Google has teamed up with Australia-based real estate firm Lendlease to jointly develop Downtown West.

“It is our shared goal to optimize the public benefits of this project, including reconfiguring streets into open space and bike and pedestrian trails to give the community a more walkable, transit-oriented downtown,” a Google spokesperson said.

To move forward, the tech company and the city have formed a posse to square off against a group of individuals to determine who can stake a claim to the remnants of the small bits of land, as records filed at the county courthouse show.

Where are these remnants located? Primarily on the streets near the transit station and SAP Center. Put another way, fans on their way to a Sharks game or commuters trying to catch a train might have easily walked on this land over the decades.

The sites are:

• The South Montgomery Street roadway between East San Fernando Street and Park Avenue, 1.26 acres.

• A slice of Park Avenue extending west from South Montgomery, 0.9 acre.

• A tiny section of South Autumn Street, aka Barack Obama Boulevard, at the corner of East San Fernando Street near the former Poor House Bistro site, 6,195 square feet.

• A bedroom-sized chunk of Otterson Street in the vicinity of where Schwall family members once lived, 187 square feet.

Google and San Jose filed a lawsuit in April 2022 to convince a county judge to definitively award them clear and unquestioned ownership of the land.

But in May 2022, Peter Adams, a possible descendant of Peachy, one of the 19th-century owners of the small properties, attempted to grab ownership of one land chunk.

Adams countersued to attempt to convince the court that he was the legal owner of a parcel remnant in downtown San Jose. On July 22, however, Adams filed a motion to dismiss his own lawsuit, meaning that Adams for now has abandoned his efforts to seek a court ruling that he owns one or more of the parcels.

The legal maneuvers and the clear title to the properties must be settled before substantial development of the Google village can proceed. So Google in April sued at least 37 individuals like Adams whose ancestors originally gained ownership of the properties at the time of the original land grants in San Jose. Adams appears to be the only person who pushed back.

Here’s how Adams reckoned his lineage reached back to Peachy: The marriage of Mary Agnes Peachy, the niece of Archibald Peachy, to Charles Gleason; a descendant of the Peachy-Gleason marriage known as Irene Charlotte Rinderspacher; and a nephew of Irene named Gregg Munster. Gregg Munster was an ancestor of Adams, court papers claim.

But Google pushed back in a Santa Clara County court filing in June 2022, saying, “The connection between Adams and the original owner of the property, Archibald Peachy, is, at best, remote.”

The tech titan also argued that being a descendant of an individual doesn’t necessarily mean that person is an heir to the ancestor’s property.

“The plaintiff (Peter Adams) has alleged that Mr. Peachy once owned the property, that Mr. Munster inherited ‘something’ from Mr. Peachy and Mr. Adams is the ‘descendant’ of Mr. Munster,” Google stated in the court papers. “These allegations are inadequate to state a ‘quiet title’ claim.”

In February 2022, ahead of the suit, Google offered Adams a $5,000 “courtesy fee” if Adams filed a quitclaim deed to definitely show that Adams had no ownership rights to any of the parcel remnants, court papers show.

Adams did not respond to an interview request. It is not clear how he responded to the offer or why he dropped his countersuit.

Google hopes to begin construction by no later than sometime in the first half of 2023 on infrastructure improvements as a precursor to the actual development of the transit village.

The move to settle the litigation is a hopeful sign for the downtown San Jose Google village, said Bob Staedler, principal executive with Silicon Valley Synergy, a land-use consultancy.

“This demonstrates,” Staedler said, “that the Downtown West project is moving along as planned without any significant delays.”