The Lady of Gravesend

The Lady so integral to the history and development of Brooklyn spent most of her life in England. She was born Deborah Dunch around 1586, in London’s Gray’s Inn or a country estate outside the city. Her father, Walter Dunch, was a barrister and her grandfather, William Dunch, was an Auditor of the Royal Mint. She was a child during the reign of Elizabeth I, and grew up in the shadow of the plague, which had killed one-quarter to one-third of London’s population only twenty years before her birth and made appearances again in 1581 and 1592.

In 1605 she married Henry Moody, who was given the title of Knight Batchelor by King James the following year, making the couple Sir Henry Moody and Lady Deborah Moody. Their home was the Garsdon manor in Wiltshire, which local ledged says came to the Moody family as a gift from King Henry VIII. The King was out hawking and fell off his horse, becoming stuck face-first in the mud. His footman Moody rescued him from suffocation and was rewarded with a grant to the Garsdon estate.

The newlyweds welcomed children Katherine and Henry, while Sir Moody served as the Sheriff of Wiltshire and later as a member of Parliament. In 1629 King Charles dissolved the Parliament and Sir Henry returned to Garsdon where he soon died. In his will, he left his wife a manor house in Wiltshire and his son the Garsdon manor, which was quickly sold. The widowed Lady Moody had two grown children, a lot of debt, and a head full of “dangerous” ideas. She was an Anabaptist, which means she believed that a person must agree to their baptism and babies should not be baptized until they are old enough to consent. Records show her living on London’s Fetter Lane in April 1635, at which time the Court of Star Chamber ordered her to “return home within 40 days as an example to the poorer classes”. She had been ordered to leave the city and return to her country estate, out of sight, and the courts were probably hoping, out of mind. The Church of England had taken notice of Lady Moody.

Still in debt, Lady Moody was in her mid-50s and facing a life of little prospect and harsh persecutions from the Church. She began making preparations for her second act. We don’t know when she started planning for her move to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but by 1639 she had arrived and was settling in. She joined the church of Salem and strained her finances to purchase Swampscott, a farm outside of Salem less than a mile from the ocean (current site of a beautiful lilac garden). She also maintained a small house in Salem, next door to the Reverend Hugh Peter. Lady Moody caught the attention of Reverend Peter when he discovered she was having regular correspondence with other settlers known for their religious agitation. Reverend Peter returned to England in 1641, but Lady Moody’s reputation as a problem in her Puritan community was already growing.

The winter of 1642 was the coldest in forty years, with deep snow and a shortage of food. In these conditions, Lady Moody was summoned to the Massachusetts court for believing “that the baptizing of infants is noe ordinance of God”. Court records show she was one of several punished for their religious beliefs at the end of 1642, including James Hubbard, William Goulder, and Obadiah Holmes, all of which would follow her when she left Salem for New Netherland. She didn’t appear at her December hearing, being “in a way of conviction before the elders” and was excommunicated from the church. She began making plans to leave the colony, putting Swampscott in the care of her tenants (and Anabaptist converts) Daniel and Elizabeth King. Moody and her followers charted a ship and headed south.

New Netherland was a Dutch colony controlled by the Dutch West India Company, whose territory included present-day Brooklyn. Lady Moody met with Director Willem Kieft, whose brutal war with the Wappinger and Lenape was just getting started. Kieft was looking for settlers to farm Long Island, hoping a strong European presence would help New Netherland hold the area against the Lenape. Lady Moody and her friends were provided use of land in the southwest corner of the island, where they planted crops and built small homes. In the fall of 1643, when the first crops were ready for harvest, the settlement was attacked. Residents fled to Lady Moody’s home for safety, then to the fort at Amersfort (Flatlands).

According to her surviving correspondence, this experience made her consider a return to Massachusetts, where she still owned Swampscott and collected rent from tenants. She wrote her friend, Governor John Winthrop, looking for advice. In February 1644, hearing of her possible return, Puritan leader and sometimes Governor John Endecott wrote to Winthrop warning she must “leave her opinions behind her” and famously calling her a “dangerous woman”. Instead of returning, Lady Moody and her followers returned to the site of their settlement and rebuilt, with additional fortifications and security measures put in place. New Netherland reached a peace agreement with the tribes in August 1645, and Lady Moody petitioned Director Kieft for a formal land patent, which was granted on December 19, 1645, making Lady Moody the first woman to hold a land patent in the colonies. The town was divided into 40 equal lots, including one for Lady Moody’s son, Sir Henry Moody.

Lady Moody named the town Gravesend and designed the layout of the town herself, using a block grid system that designated ten lots surrounding a public square, with triangle-shaped plantation lots fanned out from the grid. She enjoyed the use of two lots, farmed, and let her pigs graze freely on Coney Island. She was a respected member of Gravesend and New Netherland. According to author H.D. Eberlein, a group of pirates aboard the English ship Seven Stars landed on the farm of Anthony Jansen Van Salee and stole several pumpkins. They then sailed to Coney Island and were in the process of stealing a group of grazing pigs but left empty-handed when they realized the pigs were the property of Lady Moody.

 In 1647 Kieft was summoned to the Netherlands to answer for his conduct in the war and was replaced with Peter Stuyvesant, who was personally greeted by Lady Moody as he disembarked in New Amsterdam. They formed a friendship, with at least one of his letters to her signed, “Your honour’s affectionate friend”. Lady Moody did not hold a political position, but her status as founder and relationship with Stuyvesant made her a major player in town affairs. As an English town in a Dutch colony, tensions occasionally flared. During one particularly tense period, Lady Moody welcomed Stuyvesant into her home to negotiate peace with her residents. An understanding was reached, but English Gravesend clashed with New Netherland until the British victory in 1665.

In 1651, Lady Moody severed her ties with Massachusetts with the sale of Swampscott, brokered by her son, and sold to Daniel and Elizabeth King. Before the sale, she sent a list of items she was still keeping at the farm that she wanted to be returned, including tools, a green rug, blankets, pots, and shoes. In Gravesend, she was granted not just a plantation lot, but a farm located northeast of the town square. The house standing today at Neck Road commonly known as the Moody House was never owned or inhabited by her. Her real home was likely on the northeast town lots and no trace of it exists today.

In 1657, a report was sent to Amsterdam that the residents of Gravesend “reject infant baptism, the Sabbath, the office of preacher, and the teachers of God’s word”. A 1657 Quaker meeting in Lady Moody’s home is thought to be the first Quaker meeting in America, organized by Lady Moody when she invited the newly arrived Robert Hodgson to speak. This put her at odds with Stuyvesant, who hated the Quakers and made it a crime to harbor one. Dutch tolerance only extended so far, which Gravesend resident John Tilton learned when he was removed from his position in the office of the clerk and imprisoned for the crime. The Gravesend Patent promised the settlers they would “enjoy free liberty of conscience” but this seemingly didn’t apply to the Quakers.

Lady Deborah Moody died from unknown causes around 1659. She was likely buried in the town cemetery, but there is no marker and the plot location is unknown. Her original street grid design can still be seen in Gravesend and includes “Lady Moody Triangle”, a small park dedicated to her memory.

The majority of research for this blog post was done using the Saretta G. Hicks papers on Lady Deborah Moody (ARC.276).