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Swampscott Mass.

Lady Deborah Moody, A Dangerous Woman, Comes to New England

In 1654, when New York governor Peter Stuyvesant needed help collecting taxes, he turned to Deborah Moody. The career of the Salem, Mass., woman then came full circle from outcast to political power broker.

Sketch of a woman in 1640 by Wenceslaus Hollar.

A friend of John Winthrop, Moody came to Massachusetts to escape religious intolerance in England sometime before 1640. Moody’s husband, a baronet, had died 10 years earlier. Her son had sold most of the familial lands in Wiltshire.

In trying to reestablish her life as a widow, Lady Moody had visited London where she attended some of the more exotic religious services of the day among the Baptists and Quakers.

Deborah Moody, Anabaptist

Deborah Moody became an Anabaptist, a school of thought that held people should not be baptized as children but rather as adults.

Anabaptism amounted to heresy in the 1630s. Lady Moody, now a heretic, had to appear before England’s Star Chamber, the high court that heard cases involving the nobility. The court had the power to decide how long nobles could live away from their ancestral estates, and it ordered Lady Moody to go home to Wiltshire.

A 1504 document showing Henry VII in England’s Star Chamber with clerics and the mayor of London.

Moody had considered joining Winthrop and his settlement in America. Though she had long criticized the Church of England, the prospect of joining in the new colony had initially seemed too daunting. But with this new frustration, Deborah Moody decided to move.

At age 54, she pulled up stakes and sailed for America. She first settled in Saugus on a grant of 400 acres for a plantation. Shortly, however, she bought a small house in Salem, and then a farm of more than 1,000 acres from John Humphrey in nearby Swampscott. Humphrey, a one-time deputy governor of Massachusetts, had grown tired of the new colony and was returning to England.

Neighbor Trouble

She had the misfortune of moving into the neighborhood of the Rev. Hugh Peter, also a fellow member of the church at Salem. Given her unconventional beliefs she could hardly have chosen a worse neighbor. Peter was one of the ministers who had successfully prosecuted Anne Hutchinson just two years earlier for her Anabaptist beliefs.

Hugh Peter. Image courtesy of The Public Catalogue Foundation

Peter succeeded in having her banished from Massachusetts for her illegal religious beliefs.

Faced with the increasing hostility, Deborah Moody decided to leave Massachusetts just as Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams had. Rather than head for Rhode Island, however, Moody chose New Amsterdam (now New York).

John Winthrop noted in his journal: “The Ladye Moodye, a wise and anciently religious woman, being taken with the error of denying baptism to infants, was dealt withal by many of the elders and others, and admonished by the church of Salem (whereof she was a member); but persisting still, and to avoid further trouble, etc., she removed to the Dutch, at the advice of all her friends. Many others infected with Anabaptism removed thither also. She was after excommunicated.”

John Winthrop

Gravesend

Moody and a group of her followers who relocated in 1643 to New Amsterdam found the Dutch government much more tolerant. She still had considerable wealth, and New Amsterdam welcomed her. The governor granted her 7,000 acres on the southwestern tip of Long Island.

Lady Deborah Moody Memorial in Gravesend.

She called her new settlement Gravesend. But the new town had a rocky beginning. Though she had cautioned all her fellow settlers to pay the local Native Americans for any land they wanted to use, there were misunderstandings. The indigenous people did not embrace the concept of property ownership. Payments were for fishing rights, they believed, while the colonists expected full ownership of the land they paid for.

Soon, the Natives attacked and the settlers gathered in Lady Moody’s sizable home for protection. Deborah Moody toyed with the idea of returning to her home and land in Massachusetts. Peter had by now returned to England. He would eventually be executed as a regicide for his role in the trial and execution of Charles I.

Old Gravesend Cemetery.

But Peter was not the only enemy Moody had. Moody wrote to Winthrop asking whether she might return, and on-again, off-again governor John Endecott urged him to advise her against it unless she was prepared to renounce her views.

“I shall desire that she may not have advice to return to this jurisdiction, unless she will acknowledge her evil in opposing the churches and leave her opinions behind her, for she is a dangerous woman,” Endecott wrote.

Deborah Moody, Brooklynite

Moody and her fellow Gravesend villagers fortified their small town and dug in. Over the coming years, the town grew and Deborah Moody earned widespread respect. Gravesend did not adopt a single, sanctioned church. Rather, people worshiped as they wished with many, like Lady Moody, simply conducting services in their homes.

As stability set in, Lady Moody emerged as a major power in the town. She had so much influence that in 1654 Gov. Stuyvesant had to call on her to mediate a dispute over taxes.

Dahill Road and Kings Highway in Gravesend, Brooklyn.

Lady Deborah Moody died in 1659 at 73, and Gravesend — now part of Brooklyn — bears her stamp to this day. You can still walk some of the streets she laid out in 1643.

With thanks to Liz Loveland for her editorial suggestion. This story about Deborah Moody was updated in 2023.

Images: Lady Deborah Moody Memorial by By Jim.henderson – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23005948. Old Gravesend Cemetery By Jim.henderson – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23005944. Brooklyn roads by CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1335607.

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Johnny Pesky, Boston’s Beloved Baseball Ambassador

Fenway Park’s famed Pesky Pole is less the legacy of a single home run in 1948 than a tribute to Johnny Pesky, the Boston Red Sox Beloved Baseball Ambassador. For decades he was as well known — and loved — in Boston as Faneuil Hall or Old Ironsides.

Johnny Pesky. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Johnny Pesky was born John Michael Paveskovich on Sept. 27, 1919, the son of Croatian immigrants in Portland, Ore. His name was shortened during his baseball career to fit into the box score, and he changed it officially in 1947. “My mother was pretty mad,” he said.

He had a lifetime batting average of .307 and was often a league leader in on-base percentage, though he hit only 17 home runs in his career. Some of those were hit near the right-field foul pole, which today marks the shortest distance for a home run in Major League baseball.

The Pesky Pole

Red Sox pitcher Mel Parnell gave it the nickname, Pesky said, because he won a game for him in 1948 with a home run around the pole. For years it was unofficially known as the Pesky Pole until Pesky’s 87^th birthday in 2006, when the Red Sox officially dedicated it with a plaque.

The Pesky Pole in yellow

In 1940, he was offered a $2,500 bonus to sign with the St. Louis Cardinals, but chose the Boston Red Sox at $500 a year. He decided on Boston because his parents were so impressed with scout Ernie Johnson. They felt he’d look out for their middle son. (He also brought flowers for Mrs. Pesky and bourbon for Mr. Pesky.)

For most of the next six decades, Johnny Pesky was a fixture at Fenway Park as player, coach, manager, announcer, special assistant to the general manager and Beloved Baseball Ambassador.

He became the Red Sox star shortstop during the ‘40s and ‘50s, teaming up with second-baseman Bobby Doerr in one of the best double-play combinations of the era. The lifelong friendship among teammates Pesky, Doerr, Ted Williams and Dom DiMaggio was chronicled by David Halberstam in his book, The Teammates.

Johnny and Ruth Pesky

World War II

Pesky lost three prime playing years to World War II – and before that, three nights a week during the season to train for naval aviation training. Boston Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey rewarded his service by giving him a $5,000 bonus — enough for his parents to buy a house.

From 1943-45 he served in the Navy. He met his wife, Ruth C. Hickey of Lynn, Mass., at Gordon Field Naval Air Base in Atlanta, where they were both stationed. Ruth was a Machinist Mate 1st Class whose job was to start airplane engines. They were happily married for 60 years.

He spent most of his life on Boston’s North Shore, in Lynn and Swampscott. A ubiquitous community booster, he hosted 400 people at the annual Johnny Pesky Friendship Dinner. With his contemporaries, he frequented local restaurants, such as the International House of Pancakes in Swampscott. There he presided as “chairman” of the “Breakfast Club.” He devoted countless hours to raising money for the Jimmy Fund and other charities. And he prided himself on never saying no to a kid who wanted an autograph, no matter how old the kid.

For years he appeared as a spokesman in the deliberately corny ‘Window Boys’ commercials for J.B. Sash & Door. (Watch one of his old commercials here.)

The St. Louis Cardinals

Johnny Pesky. Photo taken by flickr user pierrelascott, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution.

The low point of Johnny Pesky’s career came in the eighth inning of the last game of the 1946 World Series. Boston and St. Louis tied the score at 3-3. Enos Slaughter then made his mad dash from first to home to score the winning run. Pesky seemed to hold the ball on the relay before throwing home. St. Louis catcher Joe Garagiola later said Pesky couldn’t have thrown Slaughter out anyway.

He went home to Portland after the game and didn’t leave his house for five weeks. Finally he emerged. In a 1979 Boston Globe interview, he said, “If you’re a palooka, you’ve got to live with it.”

Sixty-eight years later, the Red Sox beat the Cardinals in four games. Johnny Pesky helped hoist the World Series banner the following spring. And in April 2012, Fenway Park celebrated its 100^th birthday. Johnny Pesky and Bobby Doerr were the center of attention, side by side in wheelchairs at second base.

Johnny Pesky died at 93 on Aug. 13, 2012 in Danvers, Mass.

This story last updated in 2022.

Images: Pesky Pole By User Francesco Crippa on Flickr – Originally posted to Flickr as "dsc_6431", CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4337393.

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Denton Crocker Writes a Love Letter From a Train, 1943

Denton Crocker spent World War II fighting the Allies’ deadliest enemy in the South Pacific: the mosquito. Malaria struck as many as 65 percent of the troops stationed in that theater. The U.S. Army formed units of scientists and science students to identify the mosquitos that carried the disease. The units also educated servicemen on things they could do to prevent malaria. They called themselves bug chasers.

Denton Crocker and Jean-Marie Jensen, newly engaged

Denton Crocker was drafted into the Army in January, but he was deferred until he graduated from Northeastern University with a degree in biology. He toyed with the idea of being a conscientious objector, but he decided Germany’s aggression had to be stopped. He was inducted on June 29, 1942, in his hometown of Swampscott, Mass., and was immediately sent to Fort Devens in Ayer, Mass. Ten weeks later he was sent to Camp Pickett in Virginia and began training at Sanitary Technician School and Officer Candidate Preparatory School. While home on leave in November, he asked Jean-Marie Jensen to marry him. She said yes.

Crocker was eventually selected for the 31st Malaria Survey Unit, Medical Department. He was relieved he wouldn’t have to bear arms. On Aug. 16, 1943, he left for Camp Harrahan in New Orleans to join a newly forming unit. He served in the jungles of New Guinea, the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines.

After the war, Crocker married Jean-Marie, earned a graduate degree, chaired the Biology department at Skidmore College and fathered four children. His son and namesake, Denton ‘Mogie’ Crocker,’ was killed in the Vietnam War. (Read about it here.)

He also wrote a memoir of his service. It included letters to his parents and Jean-Marie, photographs and a journal kept by his friend Robert Roecker. He called it My War on Mosquitos. In his introduction, he wrote:

There were some more stressful times. I travelled from Milne Bay, New Guinea to Finschhafen, New Guinea on a Liberty ship full of 500lb bombs. I was strafed and bombed on Morotai in the Moluccas and on Mindoro in the Philippines. In a convoy going to the Philippines I watched a torpedo plane release its torpedo at the ship behind us before being destroyed (the torpedo narrowly missed). I saw kamikaze planes crash into ships. I was a part of the initial landing on Mindoro (unopposed on land). These were not happy times. As my friend and foxhole-mate Bob Roecker used to say, “Denny and I are enormously loyal to our country. We tremble with patriotism in our foxhole.” But I have to say that the overriding memories of the whole experience are of vast convoys sailing peacefully in the moonlight, of a tropical island with the sun rising behind it, of a waterfall high in the mountains of New Guinea, of feather stars and convoys on a coral reef. These and many others like them have given my life a dimension and enrichment that I otherwise probably would not have had.

Here is his letter to Jean-Marie on Aug. 16:

To JM, Aug. 16, 11:30 a.m.:

I am writing to you from the train, so the penmanship will probably be poor, but I am thinking of you so much that writing makes us seem closer together. We boarded the train at 2:00 a.m. this morning, and got Pullmans, so went right to bed. Got up at 6:15, ate in the dining car and have been sitting around doing all sorts of things since.

–Time out for lunch–

Denton Crocker

Had a good meal with lamb, milk, squash, lettuce, lima beans & ice cream. I was going to mention before lunch some of the things men do in the car. Of course there is the inevitable card game with plenty of money changing hands, lots of yelling and good natured cursing and threats. In one end of the car, a fellow was reading a Steinbeck short story to a couple of others and at the other end. Cassel was in the midst of a heated argument with someone about the finite and the infinite.

We’re in Tennessee somewhere now. The country is rolling, but not so much so as western Virginia. There are occasional small outcroppings of rock which Gossington thinks is soft like limestone. Most of the farmland seems to be planted with corn. Mourning doves and mockingbirds are common.

The coaches on the train are very crowded, with people sitting on suitcases in the aisles. I feel guilty with all the luxury we are having. We just went through Jefferson City, Tenn., will nick the NW corner of Georgia and will be in Birmingham, Alabama at 9:00 pm. For the rest of the trip I’ll probably be in bed.

10:30 p.m.

We’re late in Birmingham, I just went to bed and am lying all by myself in an upper berth. I miss you terribly much darling and can’t help but think that each minute is taking me farther and father away from you — I love you.

Denton Crocker died Feb. 19, 2012, in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Photos courtesy Library of Congress. With thanks to the Library of Congress, Veterans History Project. This story was updated in 2017.

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