After five more years confusion, in March 1889, Patterson's son-in-law, Lt. Francis Winslow (II) USN (oldest brother of future Rear Admiral Cameron Winslow), after 19 years of Naval service during the slow-promotion post-war years, resigned from the Navy to devote himself to subdividing, renting, developing, and selling portions of the property. He was successful. A portion of this property later became the subject of a lawsuit that reached the United States Supreme Court, "Francis Winslow v. Baltimore & Ohio RR Co.", 188 U.S. 646 (1903), which includes excerpts of the will by which Mrs. Patterson came into the property on the death of her mother, Catherine Worthington Pearson, in 1868. The suit, which the Patterson/Winslow family won, involved renewal of a lease of some of the land to a railroad. (Winslow (II) also developed an expertise in oysters, having led government surveys in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. A "google" search on "Francis Winslow" and "oyster" returns dozens of "hits," referring to the Francis Winslow who managed the Brentwood property. His work is still cited today (2007) as authoritative and accurate. See: http://www.ocracokepreservation.org/id39.html . Winslow was also a leader of US government survey expeditions in Nicaragua, studying potential routes for a canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific.).