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Anne Hutchinson

 
Who2 Biography: Anne Hutchinson, Religious Figure / Activist
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  • Born: July 1591
  • Birthplace: Alford, England
  • Died: 20 August 1643
  • Best Known As: Religious midwife banished from colonial Massachusetts

Name at birth: Anne Marbury

Anne Hutchinson was a theologically literate midwife who was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1638 for her religious views. Hutchinson emigrated with her husband and children from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634, following religious mentor Reverend John Cotton. Bible-study classes she hosted for women earned her a following that later included men, notably the colony's governor, Henry Vane. But she roused controversy with her criticisms of other ministers and her interpretations of Christian doctrine, including her emphasis on personal revelation over classical church rites. In 1637 John Winthrop, who had replaced Vane as governor, put Hutchinson on trial for heresy. He charged her with violating the Bible's commandment to "honor thy father and mother," arguing that Hutchinson had undermined the fathers of the church with her preaching. Although Hutchinson ably defended herself in court, she was banished from the colony as being unfit for society. She settled in Rhode Island, where she and her husband helped found Portsmouth. After his death in 1642 she and her younger children moved to Dutch territory in what is now New York's Pelham Bay Park. She and all but one of her children were killed in an attack by members of the Siwanoy tribe in 1643.

Hutchinson's exact date of birth is unknown; she was baptized on 20 July 1591 in the town of Alford, a clue that she was likely born a few days earlier. William Shakespeare's birth is dated in the same manner... Hutchinson and her husband had 15 children.

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Anne Hutchinson
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(baptized July 20, 1591, Alford, Lincolnshire, Eng. — died August or September 1643, Pelham Bay, N.Y.) Anglo-American religious leader. In 1612 she married William Hutchinson, and they followed John Cotton to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634. She organized weekly meetings of Boston women to discuss recent sermons and to express their own theological views. Before long, ministers and magistrates were attracted to her sessions, at which she criticized the narrow Puritan orthodoxy and espoused a "covenant of grace." Her opponents accused her of believing that God's grace had freed Christians from the need to observe established moral precepts. Tried for "traducing the ministers," she was sentenced to banishment; refusing to recant, she was excommunicated. In 1638 she and her husband established a colony at Aquidneck Island, which became part of Rhode Island.

For more information on Anne Hutchinson, visit Britannica.com.

Biography: Anne Marbury Hutchinson
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English-born Anne Marbury Hutchinson (1591-1643) was banished from the Massachusetts colony and excommunicated from its church for dissenting from the Puritan orthodoxy. Her "case" was one of several prefiguring the eventual separation of church and state in America.

Anne Marbury was born in Alford, Lincolnshire, the eldest daughter of a strong-willed Anglican priest who had been imprisoned and removed from office because of his demand for a better-educated clergy. In 1605 the family moved to London, where her father was reinstated to the clergy. He died in 1611, leaving his daughter a legacy of biblical scholarship and religious independence. The following year Anne returned to her birthplace as the bride of William Hutchinson, a prosperous cloth merchant. For the next 20 years she operated the household, acquired a knowledge of medicinal herbs, and cared for over a dozen children.

Her Early Puritanism

Hutchinson also continued her father's religious individualism. Adopting Puritanism, she often journeyed to St. Botolph's Church in Boston, England, to hear John Cotton, one of England's outstanding Puritan ministers. When the Anglican Church silenced him and he left for the colony of Massachusetts in America, Hutchinson became extremely distraught. She finally persuaded her husband to leave for America, so that she could follow her religious mentor.

The Hutchinson family was well received in Massachusetts. William Hutchinson was granted a desirable house lot in Boston, and both husband and wife quickly became church members. William Hutchinson resumed his career as a merchant, became a landowner, and was elected a town selectman and deputy to the General Court. Hutchinson's experience with medicinal herbs made her much in demand as a nurse, and she made many friends. When she was criticized for failing to attend weekly prayer meetings in the homes of parishioners, she responded by holding meetings in her own home. She began by reiterating and explaining the sermons of John Cotton but later added some of her own interpretations, a practice that was to be her undoing.

Puritan Orthodoxy

John Cotton was an intelligent and subtle theologian who had articulated an extremely fine balance between the value of God's grace and the value of good works in achieving salvation. While the Puritans believed that salvation was the result of God's grace, freely given to man, they also maintained that good works, or living the moral life, were important signs of that salvation and necessary preparation for the realization that one had received God's grace. But grace and works had to be kept in proper balance. To overemphasize works was to argue that man could be responsible for his own salvation and thus would deny God's power over man. On the other hand, to overemphasize grace was to assert a religious individualism that denied the necessity of moral living and by implication rejected clerical leadership, church discipline, and civil authority. While Cotton had maintained his balance in this most difficult of issues, Hutchinson did not, and she finally came to stress grace to the exclusion of works in determining salvation. The origin of her views is difficult to discover. Certainly Cotton had influenced her. She probably held her beliefs prior to her arrival in Boston, but she evidently did not advance them until the meetings in her home.

As her meetings became more popular, Hutchinson drew some of Boston's most influential citizens to her home. Many of these were town merchants and artisans who had been severely criticized for profiteering in prices and wages; they saw in Hutchinson's stress on grace a greater freedom regarding morality and therefore more certainty of their own salvation. But others came in search of a more meaningful and personal relationship with their God. As she attracted followers and defenders, the orthodox Puritans organized to oppose her doctrines and her advocates.

Antinomian Controversy

The issue of grace as opposed to works assumed political significance and ultimately divided Massachusetts into hostile camps. The orthodox Puritans called the Hutchinson group "Antinomians," or those who denied the applicability of moral law to the saved, and the Hutchinsonians referred to orthodox Puritans as "Legalists," or those who trusted only the observance of church laws as a sign of salvation. The orthodox Puritans, always a majority in the colony, came to demand repudiation of what seemed not only religious error but also potential social chaos. If Hutchinson's views predominated, they reasoned, individual conscience would replace clerical and civil authority as the standard for public conduct.

The Puritan orthodoxy began its assault on the dissenters in the May 1637 election. Henry Vane, a Hutchinson defender, was defeated for reelection to the governorship by John Winthrop, an opponent of her views. In the summer a synod was called in order that the "errors" of the Hutchinsonians could be identified and dealt with by the government. Following a special election in October, in which the orthodoxy increased its political strength, the government moved against individuals. Boston's pro-Hutchinson deputies were not permitted to take their seats in the General Court, and Hutchinson's brother-in-law John Wheelwright (previously convicted for sedition and contempt because of a sermon preached in defense of grace) was banished.

Anne Hutchinson Banished

The court then moved against Hutchinson. It was a difficult situation. As a woman, her words had not been public and she had not participated in the political maneuvers surrounding the controversy. Called before the court, she was accused of sedition and questioned extensively. She defended herself well, however, demonstrating both biblical knowledge and debating skill. She returned the next morning to be aided by John Cotton's testimony about her beliefs, which differed from the report of the clergymen who had spoken for the court. This conflicting evidence would have cleared her, but she brashly intervened and, before it was over, had declared herself the recipient of direct revelations from God, without aid of either Scripture or clergy. This assertion of direct communion with God was regarded as the vilest heresy by all, and it sealed her doom. She was banished as a woman "not fit for [Massachusetts] society."

While Hutchinson's trial was, by modern standards, a gross miscarriage of justice, it was not unjust according to the standards of 17th-century England, where, generally, in sedition cases a formal defense was not permitted and a jury was not used. Yet even by 17th-century standards, a mistrial occurred when the same men sat both as prosecution and judge, for her guilt had been thus "known" by the General Court long before she even presented herself to it.

After her sentencing, Hutchinson's importance waned. Her strongest supporters had either left Massachusetts or been banished, and her idol, John Cotton, had finally allied himself with the orthodoxy. The result of her investigation by the Boston congregation was a foregone conclusion. Her attempt to renounce her former errors was taken as incomplete by the clergy, and she was excommunicated for the sin of lying. Within a week she and her family departed for Rhode Island, where she was free to practice her religious views. In 1642 her husband died, and Hutchinson moved with her six youngest children to Long Island and then to the New Netherland (New York) mainland. In the late summer of 1643, Hutchinson and all but one of her children were killed in an Indian attack.

It was a sad end for an important religious figure. Hutchinson's emphasis on grace as the only requirement for salvation was an important step toward the achievement of religious freedom - that is, the ability to follow the dictates of one's own conscience in matters of belief - in America.

Further Reading

The best biography of Anne Hutchinson is Emery John Battis, Saints and Sectaries: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1962). Other useful biographies are Helen Auguer, An American Jezebel: The Life of Anne Hutchinson (1930); Edith R. Curtis, Anne Hutchinson (1930); and Winnifred King Rugg, Unafraid: A Life of Anne Hutchinson (1930). Relevant documents dealing with the Antinomian controversy were published in David D. Hall, ed., The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History (1968). Background material is in Charles F. Adams, Three Episodes of Massachusetts History: The Settlement of Boston Bay; the Antinomian Controversy; A Study of Church and Town Government (2 vols., 1892; 5th ed. 1896); James T. Adams, The Founding of New England (1921); Thomas J. Wertenbaker, The Puritan Oligarchy (1947); Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (1958); and Larzer Ziff, The Career of John Cotton: Puritanism and the American Experience (1962).

US History Companion: Hutchinson, Anne
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(1591-1643), New England religious leader and midwife. Hutchinson is known chiefly for her role in the antinomian controversy in Massachusetts Bay Colony. Her participation in so public an event, though rare for premodern women, was not unique. From the early Christian era, female activism in religious life gave some women high visibility, thus preserving their voices in the historical record. The splintering of the Puritan movement in seventeenth-century England gave women broader scope for leadership as lay preachers, visionaries, and petitioners.

Like many of her contemporaries, Hutchinson left no correspondence, journal, or published works. Only the documents of the antinomian controversy, principally the record of her two trials before the General Court (November 1637) and the Church of Boston (March 1638), provide the primary source material for interpreting her mental world. Close readings of these documents have enabled historians to understand the political, theological, and gender issues at the root of this colonial crisis.

Several factors contributed to Hutchinson's social authority in early Boston. Born in Alford, Lincolnshire, England, she was the daughter of Bridget Dryden and the dissenting Anglican clergyman Francis Marbury. As the second daughter of the Marburys' thirteen children, Anne developed her talents for domestic leadership and the use of herbal medicines early in life. From her father she received an education in theology and conscientious dissent. The Marburys moved to London in 1605, but when Anne married the merchant William Hutchinson in 1612 the couple returned to Alford to live. They began traveling to St. Botolph's in Lincolnshire to hear the charismatic preaching of John Cotton. During these years, too, Hutchinson gave birth to twelve children; another would be born in Boston, Massachusetts. Following Cotton's suppression for his Puritan views, he migrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1633. Bereft at the loss of his inspiring ministry, Hutchinson persuaded her husband to remove their family to Boston, Massachusetts, in September 1634, where their gentry status and piety assured them a prominent position in the Puritan colony. Two years later, however, Anne Hutchinson and John Cotton found themselves at the center of a religious and political contest.

The antinomian controversy of 1636-1638 broke out in the waning months of a religious revival led by Cotton when a spiritual malaise gripped the colonists. Hutchinson had been holding biweekly devotional meetings to discuss Cotton's sermons at her home, which drew as many as sixty people. She brought attention to Cotton's spirit-centered theology, championing him and her brother-in-law John Wheelwright as true Christian ministers against the "legal" preachers who taught that a moral life was sufficient grounds for salvation. With Cotton and Wheelwright, Hutchinson believed that redemption was God's gift to his elect and could not be earned by human effort: the soul remained passive to the work of divine grace in the drama of salvation.

The effect of Hutchinson's meetings was divisive, and her supporters composed a significant faction in the colony. A ministerial synod examined Cotton and cleared him from the charge of heresy; the investigation then focused on Hutchinson and Wheelwright. In contrast to Cotton, Hutchinson and her brother-in-law took their radical spirituality to an extreme position. Cotton's style was mediative; theirs was adversarial. Consequently, Hutchinson and her supporters were banished by the General Court of Massachusetts; and the result of her trial by the Church of Boston was excommunication. The Hutchinsons went to Aquidneck in Narragansett Bay. In 1642 when William Hutchinson died, his widow and the six youngest children moved to New York where all but one daughter were killed in an Indian raid in 1643.

The domestic setting for Hutchinson's leadership is key to understanding the role of premodern women in religious life. It was among her female neighbors in need of her medical skills that she first communicated her controversial religious ideas. Her devotional meetings were also common practice among the early Puritans. Like many religious movements, early Puritanism was a household religion. With its institutionalization, women lost the authority they had exercised in the formative domestic phase. Such was the case in Massachusetts where John Winthrop and company were intent on building a godly society protected by the coordinate powers of church and state. The enterprise demanded a new emphasis on outward morality, or sanctification, that would bolster the authority of both ministers and magistrates. But Hutchinson's prophetic stress on the indwelling Holy Spirit, although an authentic strain of Puritan belief, empowered the laity at the expense of the ministry. Moreover, her claim to immediate revelation was especially threatening to the advocates of law and order. A generation later a similar contest would be waged against the Quakers, some of whom had been among Hutchinson's supporters.

Bibliography:

Francis J. Bremer, ed., Anne Hutchinson: Troubler of the Puritan Zion (1981); David D. Hall, ed., The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History, rev. ed. (1990); Amy Lang, Prophetic Woman: Anne Hutchinson and the Problem of Dissent in the Literature of New England (1987).

Author:

Barbara Ritter Dailey

See also New England Colonies; Puritanism.


 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Anne Hutchinson
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Hutchinson, Anne, c.1591-1643, religious leader in New England, b. Anne Marbury in Lincolnshire, England. She emigrated (1634) with her husband and family to Massachusetts Bay, where her brilliant mind and her kindness won admiration and a following. The informal discussions at her home gave scope to Puritan intellects, but her espousal of the covenant of grace as opposed to the covenant of works (i.e., she tended to believe that faith alone was necessary to salvation) and her claim that she could identify the elect among the colonists caused John Cotton, John Winthrop, and other former friends to view her as an antinomian heretic. She defied them, was tried by the General Court, and was sentenced (1637) to banishment for "traducing the ministers." Several of her followers-including William Coddington, John Wheelwright, John Underhill, and John Clarke-also left Massachusetts Bay. After helping Coddington to found the present Portsmouth, R.I., she quarreled with him and, with Samuel Gorton, ousted him in 1639. After Coddington's return to power, she moved (1642) to Long Island and then to what is now Pelham Bay Park in New York City. There she and all the other members of her family but one were killed by Native Americans.

Bibliography

See W. K. Rugg, Unafraid (1930, repr. 1970); E. J. Battis, Saints and Sectaries (1962); F. J. Bremer, Anne Hutchinson (1981); A. S. Lang, Prophetic Woman: Anne Hutchinson and the Problem of Dissent in the Literature of New England (1987); E. LaPlante, American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans (2004).

Wikipedia: Anne Hutchinson
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"Anne Hutchinson on Trial" by Edwin Austin Abbey

Anne Hutchinson (baptized July 20, 1591[1][2] – August 20, 1643) was a pioneer settler in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Netherlands, and the unauthorized minister of a dissident church discussion group. Hutchinson held Bible meetings for women that soon had great appeal to men as well. Eventually, she went beyond Bible study to proclaim her own theological interpretations of sermons, some of which offended the colony leadership. A major controversy ensued, and after a trial before a jury of officials and clergy, she was banished from her colony.[3]

She is a key figure in the study of the development of religious freedom in England's American colonies and the history of women in ministry. The state of Massachusetts honors her with a State House monument calling her a "courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration."[4]

Contents

Early years

Anne Hutchinson was born Anne Marbury in Alford, Lincolnshire, England, and baptized there on July 20, 1592, the daughter of Francis Marbury, a dissident Puritan clergyman, and Bridget (Dryden) Marbury.[2] Anne was educated at home and read from her father's library. At the age of 21, on August 9, 1612, Anne married William (Will) Hutchinson (d. Boston, Massachusetts, 1642) at St. Mary Woolnoth, London.[2] She and her family followed the sermons of John Cotton, a Protestant minister whose teachings echoed those of her father's. Cotton left England because of his persecution by the bishops. Anne and her family likewise emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1634, together with other colonists.[5]

Religious activities

The majority of colonial European settlers who came to America for religious reasons came for the freedom to practice their own religion, and in some cases to impose it on others. In their early years, most colonies enforced a uniformity at least as strict as had occurred in the country they had left. There was considerable Puritan intolerance in Massachusetts and Connecticut.[6] Her particular "heresy" was to maintain that it was a blessing and not a curse to be a woman.[7]

Role of women in Puritan society

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Hutchinson may have been brought down because of her gender. Many commentators have suggested that she fell victim to contemporary mores surrounding the role of women in Puritan society. Hutchinson spoke her mind freely within the context of a male hierarchy unaccustomed to outspoken women. Alternatively, she may have been persecuted mainly because she spoke up against the established church and state government, as even Roger Williams, who had been a Puritan church minister, had been exiled for by the colony not long before. The extent to which she was persecuted was perhaps proportional to the threat the established rulers saw in her, considering the many people who were willing to listen to and follow her and the threat which that may have posed. The close relationship between church and state in Massachusetts Bay meant that challenge to the ministers was quickly interpreted as challenge to established authority of all kinds.

Religious and social activist views

Against that background, Anne was extremely outspoken about some of her most controversial views. She was an avid student of the Bible which she freely interpreted in the light of what she termed her "divine inspiration." She generally adhered to the principles of Puritan orthodoxy. Notably, however, she held enormously progressive, ahead-of-her-times notions about the equality and rights of women, in contradiction of both Puritan and prevailing cultural attitudes. She was forthright and compelling in proclaiming these beliefs, which put her in considerable tension not only with the Massachusetts Bay Colony's government, who were accountable to the established Church of England (Anglican), but also with other Puritans, especially the clergy.[7]

Home Bible study group

She began conducting informal Bible studies and discussion groups in her home, something that gave scope to Puritan intellects.[8] Hutchinson invited her friends and neighbors, at first, all of them women. Participants felt free to question religious beliefs and to decry racial prejudice, including enslavement of Native Americans. Hutchinson explored Scripture much in the way of a minister. Rather than teach traditional Puritan interpretations of Scripture, she studied the Bible in great depth for herself. Often her spiritual interpretation differed widely from the learned but legalistic reading offered from the Puritan Sunday pulpit. In particular, Hutchinson constantly challenged the standard interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve. This was a vital text for the Puritans, key to the doctrine of original sin. But it was regularly cited to assign special blame to women as the source of sin and to justify the extremely patriarchal structure of Puritan society.[7]

Since she had a personal concern for women's lack of rights and the racial prejudice against Native Americans, she also applied her personal interpretation of the principles of the Bible to those social concerns. Furthermore, she openly challenged some of the moral and legal codes that the Puritans held, as well as the authority of the clergy,[6] something that would weigh against her later on.

As word of her teachings spread, she attracted new followers, including many men. Among them were men like Sir Henry Vane, who would become the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636. Attendance at her home study group grew to upwards of eighty people and had to be moved to the local church.[7]

Increasingly, the ministers opposed Hutchinson’s meetings, ostensibly on the grounds that such “unauthorized” religious gatherings might confuse the faithful. But gradually the opposition was expressed in openly misogynistic terms. Anne paid no attention to her critics. When they cited the biblical texts on the need for women to keep silent in church, she rejoined with a verse from Titus permitting that “the elder women should instruct the younger.”[7]

Heretic label

To the chagrin of clergy and colony officials, Hutchinson interpreted the doctrine of the Perseverance of the saints according to the Free Grace model, which taught that the saved could sin freely without endangering their salvation, instead of the Lordship salvation model prevalent then and now, which noted that those who were truly saved would demonstrate by seeking to follow the ways of their Saviour. She also claimed that she could identify "the elect" (see article on Predestination) among the colonists[5]. These positions caused John Cotton, John Winthrop, and other former friends to view her as an antinomian heretic.

Trials

She was brought to civil trial in 1638 by the General Court of Massachusetts, presided over by Winthrop, on the charge of “traducing the ministers.” The Court included both government officials and Puritan clergy. She was forty-six at the time and advanced in her fifteenth pregnancy. Nevertheless, she was forced to stand for several days before a board of male interrogators as they tried desperately to get her to admit her secret blasphemies. They accused her of violating the fifth commandment – to “honor the father and mother” – accusing her of encouraging dissent against the fathers of the commonwealth. It was charged that by attending her gatherings women were being tempted to neglect the care of their own families.[7]

Anne skillfully defended herself until it was clear that there was no escape from the court’s predetermined judgment. Cornered, she addressed the court with her own judgment:

...you have no power over my body, neither can you do me any harme, for I am in the hands of the eternall Jehovah my Saviour, I am at his appointment, the bounds of my habitation are cast in heaven, no further doe I esteeme of any mortal man than creatures in his hand, I feare none but the great Jehovah, which hath foretold me of these things, and I doe verily beleeve that he will deliver me out of our hands, therefore take heed how you proceed against me; for I know that for this you goe about to doe to me, God will ruine you and your posterity, and this whole state.

– Anne Hutchinson at trial[9]

This outburst brought forth angry jeers. She was called a heretic and an instrument of the devil. In the words of one minister, “You have stepped out of your place, you have rather been a husband than a wife, a preacher than a hearer, and a magistrate than a subject.” In August 1637 she was condemned by the Court that included John Eliot, famous missionary to Massachusetts Bay Colony Indians, and translator of the first complete Bible printed in America.[10] They voted to banish her from the colony "as being a woman not fit for our society."[11] She was put under house arrest to await her religious trial.[7]

In March 1638, the First Church in Boston conducted a religious trial. They accused Hutchinson of blasphemy. They also accused her of "lewd and lascivious conduct" for having men and women in her house at the same time during her Sunday meetings. This religious court found her guilty and voted to excommunicate her from the Puritan Church for dissenting from Puritan orthodoxy.

Portsmouth

During her imprisonment, some of the leaders of the Hutchinsonian movement prepared to leave the colony and settle elsewhere. Nineteen men, including William Hutchinson, met on March 7, 1638, at the home of the wealthy Boston merchant William Coddington. The men formed themselves into a "Bodie Politick" and elected Coddington their judge. They initially planned to move to Jersey or Long Island, but Roger Williams convinced them to settle in the area of Rhode Island, near Williams' Providence Plantations settlement. Coddington purchased Aquidneck island from the Indians and the settlement of Pocasset (now Portsmouth) was founded. Anne Hutchinson followed in April, after the conclusion of her trial.[12]

After enduring months of persecution and suffering while pregnant, Hutchinson suffered a miscarriage. The Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony gloated in her suffering and that of Mary Dyer, one of her followers who also suffered a miscarriage, labelling their misfortunes as the judgment of God. Massachusetts Bay continued to persecute Hutchinson's followers who had not followed her, and sent church leaders from Boston to Aquidneck in an attempt to persuade her of the correctness of their doctrine. Anne expelled the delegates from her home, denouncing the Boston church as a "whore and a strumpet".[12]

Meanwhile, Judge Coddington began to instigate theocratic policies in the government of the Pocasset colony. Coddington declared that he was permitted to exercise his interpretations of the "word of God" on the settlers and to see himself as a feudal lord ruling the island, with the settlers as his tenants. Anne successfully led a movement to amend the Pocasset constitution to allow the freemen the power to veto the governor's actions and established the positions of three "elders" to be elected by the freemen to share the powers of the governor and thus check his power. Hutchinson and the freemen demanded an election for a government to replace Coddington, who was forced to concede. William Hutchinson was elected governor and Coddington left the colony along with some of his followers, who established the settlement of Newport at the south end of the island. The freemen of Pocasset changed the name of their town to Portsmouth and adopted a new government which provided for trial by jury and separation of church and state. William Hutchinson was chosen as governor.[12]

Coddington returned with an armed force, which was initially repelled, but soon he arrested William Hutchinson and ordered his disenfranchisement. On March 12, 1640, a year after the attack, the towns of Portsmouth and Newport agreed to re-unite peacefully. Coddington was to be governor and William Hutchinson was chosen as one of his assistants. The towns were to remain autonomous with laws made by the citizens.[12]

Soon after, Anne Hutchinson realized a result of her philosophy which she had until then overlooked. Deciding that the office of magistracy was unlawful, she persuaded her husband to resign from his position, as Roger Williams put it, "because of the opinion, which she had newly taken up, of the unlawfulness of magistry." Anne Hutchinson had been led by her conscience and by meditation on the Scripture and logic to the conclusion of individualist anarchism.[12]

Death

William Hutchinson died in 1642, soon after his resignation, and the widow Anne decided to leave Portsmouth, along with some of her family and some followers. The group went to Pelham Bay, then part of New Netherland, the Dutch possession which now is the Bronx in New York City. During this time the local Indians were fighting with the Dutch, and in 1643 she and all of her family who followed her except her youngest daughter were killed there by a group of Indians who came calling in a friendly manner, and then suddenly turned on their unsuspecting victims. The Hutchinsons had been friendly to them but the native Americans had been subject to much mistreatment by the ruling Dutch and rampaged the New Netherland colony in a series of incidents known as Kieft's War. They killed the Hutchinson residents, put all their possessions in the house, including animals, and set the house afire. The youngest Hutchinson, Susanna, was taken captive and lived with the Indians until ransomed by her family members who stayed in the Bay Colony. It is said that she did not want to leave her captors. In 1651 she married John Cole and they started a farm in Rhode Island beginning a long line of descendants.

Modern interpretation

Upheld equally as a symbol of religious freedom, liberal thinking and Christian feminism, Anne Hutchinson is a contentious figure, having been lionized, mythologized and demonized by various writers. In particular, historians and other observers have interpreted and re-interpreted her life within the following frameworks: the status of women, power struggles within the church, and a similar struggle within the secular political structure. She is the only woman to have co-founded an American colony, Rhode Island, together with Roger Williams.

Church and secular politics

Historians who interpret Hutchinson's life events through the lens of the power politic have drawn the conclusion that Hutchinson suffered more because of her growing influence among local believers than because of her radical teachings.[who?]

In his article on Hutchinson in Forerunner magazine, Rogers articulates this view, writing that her interpretations were not "antithetical to what the Puritans believed at all. What began as the quibbling over fine points of Christian doctrine ended as a confrontation over the role of authority in the colony."[3] Hutchinson may have criticized the established religious authorities, as did others, but she did so while cultivating an energetic following. That religious following was large enough to be a significant force in secular politics. Hutchinson may have doomed herself by her strong support of Vane, who was replaced by Winthrop who presided at her civil trial—as much as for the specific content of her religious views.

Memorials

In front of the State House in Boston, Massachusetts, a statue stands of Anne Hutchinson with her daughter Susanna, sole survivor of the attack by Siwanoy Native Americans who killed her mother and siblings in 1643. Susannah Hutchinson was spared because of her red hair, which the Siwanoy had never seen; she was taken hostage, named "Autumn Leaf" and raised among them until ransomed back years later.[13]

Anne Hutchinson Memorial at Massachusetts State House

The statue was erected in 1922. The inscription on the marble pediment of the statue reads:

IN MEMORY OF

ANNE MARBURY HUTCHINSON

BAPTIZED AT ALFORD

LINCOLNSHIRE ENGLAND

20 JULY 1595 (sic)

KILLED BY THE INDIANS

AT EAST CHESTER NEW YORK 1643

COURAGEOUS EXPONENT

OF CIVIL LIBERTY

AND RELIGIOUS TOLERATION [4][14]

South of Boston in Quincy, Massachusetts, stands another memorial to Hutchinson at the corner of Beale Street and Grandview Avenue. This marks the place where Hutchinson remained for a while en route from Boston to Rhode Island.[citation needed]

Some literary critics trace the character of Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter to Hutchinson's persecution in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.[15]

Anne Hutchinson and her political struggle with Governor Winthrop are depicted in the 1980 play "Goodly Creatures" by William Gibson. Other notable historical characters who appear in the play are Rev. John Cotton, Governor Harry Vane, and future Quaker martyr Mary Dyer.

In southern New York, the Hutchinson River, one of the very few rivers named after a woman, and the Hutchinson River Parkway are her most prominent namesakes. Co-incidentally, another female river namesake, Sacagawea, is her neighbor at table in Judy Chicago's art installation The Dinner Party in the Brooklyn Museum. Elementary schools, such as in the town of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and in the Westchester County towns of Pelham and Eastchester are other examples.

Pardon

In 1987, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis pardoned Anne Hutchinson, revoking the order of banishment by Governor Winthrop 350 years earlier.

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ "Today in History: July 20". Library of Congress. July 16, 2007. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/jul20.html. Retrieved 2009-02-20. 
  2. ^ a b c Anderson, Robert (1999). The Great Migration. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society. p. 479. ISBN 0880821582. 
  3. ^ a b America's Christian Leaders: Anne Hutchinson
  4. ^ a b Anne Hutchinson by Peter Gomes. Harvard Magazine November 2002. Accessed February 13, 2007.
  5. ^ a b Humpherey, Grace. Women in American History. Bobbs-Merrill (1919), pp. 18-29.
  6. ^ a b Fraser, James W. Between Church and State. Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. ISBN 0312233396
  7. ^ a b c d e f g Ellsberg, Robert. All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses From Our Time.
  8. ^ "Hutchinson, Anne". Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. Reference. http://www.reference.com/browse/columbia/Hutchinson. Retrieved 2007-10-23. 
  9. ^ Adams, Charles Francis, ed (1894). Antinomianism in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1636-1638. The Prince Society. p. 175. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=YeZlDTenajAC&dq=Antinomianism+in+the+Colony+of+Massachusetts+Bay&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=r-FaZ-6rXC&sig=cyg_mLXZYeNHxh0lpKU7V3f5aus&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result. 
  10. ^ The Trial of Anne Hutchinson Accessed February 13, 2007.
  11. ^ Crawford, Deborah. Four Women in a Violent Time. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1970, pp. 144–146
  12. ^ a b c d e Rothbard, Murray Rothbard (1975). "Suppressing Heresy: The Flight of Anne Hutchinson". Conceived in Liberty. 1. Arlington House Publishers. 
  13. ^ Pritchard, Evan T. Native New Yorkers, Council Oak, 2002.
  14. ^ Anne Hutchinson Notable Women Ancestors at Rootsweb.Com, a genealogy site. Accessed February 13, 2007.
  15. ^ LaPlante , Eve (2004). American Jezebel. Harper. 

References

  • Battis, Emery. Saints and Sectaries. University of North Carolina Press, 1962. ("Sectaries" refers to a dissenter from an established church, especially a Protestant nonconformist.)
  • Ditmore, Michael G. "A Prophetess in Her Own Country: an Exegesis of Anne Hutchinson's 'Immediate Revelation.'" William and Mary Quarterly 2000 57(2): 349–392. (The article includes an annotated transcription of Hutchinson's "Immediate Revelation.")
  • Gura, Philip F. A Glimpse of Sion's Glory: Puritan Radicalism in New England, 1620–1660. Wesleyan U. Press, 1984. 398 pp.
  • Krieger, Robert E. Anne Hutchinson: Troubler of the Puritan Zion. Krieger Publishing, 1980. 152 pp.
  • Lang, Amy Schrager. Prophetic Woman: Anne Hutchinson and the Problem of Dissent in the Literature of New England. University of California Press, 1987. 237 pp.
  • LaPlante, Eve. American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, The Woman Who Defied the Puritans. HarperSanFrancisco, 2004, pp. 19, 31.
  • Leonardo, Bianca, and Rugg, Winifred K. Anne Hutchinson: Unsung Heroine of History. Tree of Life Publications, 1995. 347 pp.
  • Morgan, Edmund S. "The Case Against Anne Hutchinson." New England Quarterly 10 (1937): 635–649. (online at www.jstor.org)
  • Richardson, Douglas, Plantagenet Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families. Genealogical Publishing Co., 2004, p. 493
  • Williams, Selma R. Divine Rebel: The Life of Anne Marbury Hutchinson. 1981. 246 pp.
  • Winship, Michael P. The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson: Puritans Divided. University Press of Kansas, 2005. 180 pp.
  • Winship, Michael P. Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636–1641 (2002)

Main sources

External links


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Who2 Biography. Copyright © 1998-2008 by Who2, LLC. All rights reserved. See the Anne Hutchinson biography from Who2.  Read more
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