Hicks, Saretta G.

Born circa 1583 in Avebury, England, Deborah Dunch "…was the daughter of a barrister, granddaughter of a Bishop, wife of a member of Parliament," and a distant relative to Oliver Cromwell by marriage. Her husband, Sir Henry Moody, was made a baronet by King James I in 1622. After her husband passed away in 1629, Lady Moody was beset with financial difficulties and, finding the political atmosphere in England increasingly insupportable, immigrated to Lynn, MA in 1639.

At first welcomed in Lynn, Lady Moody's sympathies for the Anabaptist movement soon created increasing difficulties for her. Writer Saretta G. Hicks's research points especially to Lady Moody's support of the Anabaptist practice of limiting baptism to adults as a major point of contention with members of the community. The Anabaptists, a minority in Massachusetts, also advocated a separation of church and state. Lady Moody left Massachusetts in 1643 in search of a more tolerant, or less controlling, atmosphere.

She settled in New Amsterdam (later New York City), but in 1645 led a group of English settlers to Long Island and established a colony at Gravesend, located at the southern tip of Long Island, an area somewhat sheltered from the Atlantic Ocean by the westernmost extension of Coney Island and the town of New Utrecht. The grant to Lady Moody and her supporters consisted of present-day Coney Island and all of Gravesend and Sheepshead Bay. Author Jacob Judd noted that Gravesend "was organized under a Dutch patent providing for freedom of worship and self-government and by the 1650s had become a well-known haven for persecuted Quakers." It was also the first grant of land in the New World to a female.

From the guide to the Saretta G. Hicks papers on Lady Deborah Moody, 1558-1656, 1963-1965, (Brooklyn Historical Society)