At the end of June, I was preparing to take a brief hiatus from writing this column on local history. My intention was to do more research for future columns that would resume in September. I had previously written four extensive articles with a colleague on Anne Hutchinson that can be read on the website of the Eastchester Historical Society. Also on that same website, there is a You-Tube video clip in which a talented actress brings Hutchinson back to life, commenting on the injustice of her trial.
I thought that the full story of Hutchinson had been told. I would now be free to explore other topics about Eastchester’s fascinating history. As I was preparing for a quiet, solitary summer of researching and writing, I received a phone call from a direct descendant of Hutchinson that would force me to reassess certain assumptions about this woman, arguably America’s first founding mother.
425th birthday of Anne Hutchinson that was attended by many of her direct descendants.
Photo courtesy firstchurchbostonhistory.org
Descendants of Anne Hutchinson were planning a five-day, three-state road trip tracing the travels of Hutchinson and her family during their nine-year stay in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Westchester County, then part of the Dutch colony of New Netherlands. My wife and I journeyed up to Boston and began a most interesting experience. At the 15 stops on the road trip, we met more 150 direct descendants of Hutchinson, heard some of the leading academics from Harvard, Cornell and other prestigious universities comment on her true legacy, and by the end of the trip came to realize that her real accomplishments were much greater that the cartoonish version in which she is portrayed in American history textbooks.
In 1634, Anne Hutchinson arrived with her husband Will and 11 of her children (Anne would eventually have 15 children) in the town of Boston whose population numbered about 1,000 people. Boston was part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony whose total population would number about 20,000 by the end of the 1630s. Will was a wellto- do merchant who brought his family to New England to practice their Puritan faith without interference from the government. Puritans under the leadership of Gov. John Winthrop were interested in practicing their own true faith, erecting a city on a hill, a beacon for all mankind to see. Mistress Anne soon became a supervisor of midwives, whose duties it was to help women in childbirth and intervene when problems occurred.
But then problems soon developed, as two factions threatened the very existence of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. There was the ruling elite led by Gov. Winthrop that demanded complete obedience to the Puritan ministers governing the colony. The Hutchinson family belonged to the other faction that included Henry Vane, who for one year had taken the governorship away from Winthrop; the controversial ministers Roger Williams and John Wheelwright; and John Cotton, a respected theologian and the personal minister to the Hutchinsons.
What were the problems that caused so much dissension? In 1636, a bloody conflict erupted in Connecticut that we know today as the Pequot War. Anne Hutchinson, like Roger Williams who would be banished and go on to found the colony of Rhode Island, believed that the Native Americans should be compensated for their land and treated fairly. Williams had already been banished in 1636 when Anne Hutchinson had counseled people in Boston not to volunteer to fight the Native Americans in the Pequot War. There were also jealousies and disputes that had followed the Puritans across the Atlantic from England.
But Anne posed an even more serious threat to the ruling elite. She had learned theology from her father when he was under house arrest in England. Her knowledge of Lutheran and Calvinist theology far exceeded that of all the theologians with the exception of her own Boston minister, John Cotton. It was rumored that both at mid-week meetings held at her house and at sessions performed by midwives in which she was invited to supervise, she undermined the authority of the ruling theocracy.
But events would soon turn against Anne. Henry Vane, her chief ally, decided to go back to England and the controversial minster, John Wheelwright, was banished. In October 1637, Anne Hutchinson, mother of 15 children and pregnant, was put on trial. She was forced to stand for two days during her civil trial. Anne did not back down. Her knowledge of scripture and her quick wit had her winning the day. She asked her accusers to take an oath on the Bible and they refused. To the charge that she had conspired with Wheelwright, she asked her accusers about the validity of the charge. Anne had never signed a petition supporting Wheelwright.
By the second day of trial, it looked like Anne would go free. And then she did something that to many seemed inexplicable. She announced that she had received direct revelations from God and that he spoke directly to her. The basis of Puritan theology is that it is only through the Bible that the direct revelation can be achieved.
By admitting that she received direct communication with God, bypassing the ministers and inventing new scriptures, Anne was a heretic undermining the authority of the ruling elite. Anne was found guilty and banished.
My guess, and it is only a guess, is that Anne had shown Winthrop that the charges against her were groundless. Then having shown everyone the ineptitude of her persecutors, she mentioned the existence of her revelations. Later generations of Christians would see her testimony as a born-again Christian filled with the Holy Spirit. After another church trial in April in which she was found guilty,
Anne and seven of her children, in a blinding snowstorm, would make a six-day, almost journey to Portsmouth, Rhode Island, via Providence to join her husband Will.
The trial of Anne Hutchinson split the people of Boston. Winthrop was forced to confiscate the firearms of Bostonians who supported Anne Hutchinson and her faction. The major reason why Harvard was started was to better train ministers in Calvinist and Lutheran theology to adequately deal with dissenters like Anne Hutchinson.
Contemporary professional historians do warn that we should not be too hard on the
Puritans led by Gov. Winthrop. Anne Hutchinson, as her leading biographer and direct descendant, Eve LaPlante, freely admits, was not an easy person to get along with. She did not trifle fools. Her ideas threatened the stability of a holy experiment that in many ways led
the groundwork for our democratic traditions of the right to vote, town meetings and local government, and free public education.
Why is Anne Hutchinson so great a person? She saw wrong and tried to right it. When a stillborn baby was born, she buried the fetus at night so that the distraught mother would not be persecuted for witchcraft. She defended the rights of Native Americans. She questioned the authority of ministers whose strict rules and harsh punishments offended her sense of justice.
Anne today would be shocked if she knew she was viewed as a feminist heroine. She viewed herself as a religious visionary who would
not back down when her beliefs were threatened. Like her contemporary Puritans, she was willing to take a stand on principle no matter what the cost. And through all her tribulations from England to Boston to Rhode Island, her loving husband Will stood by her. Behind every good married woman is a good man.
