Gravesend is notable as the only colonial town founded by a woman, Lady Deborah Moody. In 1643, governor general Willem Kieft granted her and a group of English settlers a land patent on December 19, 1645. Moody, along with John Tilton and wife Mary Pearsall Tilton, came to Gravesend after choosing excommunication, following religious persecution in Lynn, Massachusetts. Moody and Mary Tilton had been tried because of their Anabaptist beliefs, accused of spreading religious dissent in the Puritan colony. Kieft was recruiting settlers to secure this land that his forces had taken from the Lenape. Some clashes continued, and the town organization was not completed until 1645. The signed town charter and grant was one of the first to ever be awarded to a woman in the New World. John Tilton became the first town clerk of Gravesend and owned part of what later would become Coney Island. Moody, the Tiltons, and other early English settlers were known to have paid the Lenape for their land. Another prominent early settler was Anthony Janszoon van Salee.