In 1643, Anthony Janszoon van Salee, a half-Dutch, half-Moroccan son of a pirate, and a resident of New Amsterdam, obtained from the Director General of New Netherland a patent on a tract of land of more than 200 acres on western Long Island. It ran along the shore of the Bay opposite Staten Island. Most of the land was undeveloped until 1652, when Cornelius van Werckhoven took it over. A surveyor, Werckhoven was born in Utrecht in the Netherlands, and became a principal investor in the Dutch West India Company. Upon Van Werckhoven's death in 1655, Jacques Cortelyou, guardian for Werckhoven's children, received permission to sell lots of the land to create a town. Twenty lots were laid out. Cortelyou named the settlement "Nieuw Utrecht" after Werckhoven's hometown.