Anne Hutchinson
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Anne Hutchinson (July, 1591 – July, 1643) was the unauthorized Puritan preacher of a dissident church discussion group and a pioneer settler in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Netherlands. Anne held Bible study meetings for women, but because of how popular they were men soon came too, and she went beyond scriptural study to bold declarations of her own religious philosophy. Controversy ensued, and she was eventually banished from her colony. She is a key figure in the study of the development of religious freedom in Britain's American colonies.
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[edit] Early years
Anne Hutchinson was born Anne Marbury at Alford, Lincolnshire, England. She was the eldest daughter of Francis Marbury (1555-1611), a clergyman educated at Cambridge and Puritan reformer, and Bridget Dryden (1563-1645).
In 1605, she moved with her family from Alford to London. At the age of 21, she married William Hutchinson, a prosperous cloth merchant. Anne and William returned to Alford. Anne and William Hutchinson considered themselves to be part of the Puritan movement, and in particular, they followed the teachings of the Reverend John Cotton, their religious mentor.
[edit] Migration to the New World
Puritans, just like other non-Anglican sects, were being forced to pay taxes to the Crown in England and they began to migrate to America for greater financial freedoms. Hutchinson emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1631 without John Cotton's approval. She, her husband and ten of their children sailed to America on the Griffon. Anne Hutchinson lost a total of four children in early childhood, one of whom was born in America.
[edit] Religious activities
Anne Hutchinson's conflict with the colony's Puritan religious establishment began with a series of Bible-study classes. As was standard among Puritan women of her time and place, Hutchinson invited her friends and neighbors — women, at first — to discuss in her home the words of the Bible and the teachings of local ministers. Hutchinson explored Scripture much in the way of a minister, offending the minister of the First Church in Boston, John Wilson, an ally of first governor John Winthrop. Inspired by her mentor John Cotton, the teacher of the First Church, she seemed to challenge the moral and legal codes of the Puritans, as well as the authority of the clergy.
As word of her teachings spread, she accrued new followers, among them men like Sir Henry Vane, who would become the governor of the colony in 1636. Contemporary reports suggest that upwards of eighty people attended her home Bible study sessions. Some of her followers attempted to have Reverend Wilson replaced with Anne's brother-in-law, John Wheelwright. In 1637, Vane lost the governorship to John Winthrop, who did not share Vane's opinion of Hutchinson. He instead "considered her a threat to his 'city set on a hill'," and described her meetings as being a "thing not tolerable nor comely in the sight of God, nor fitting for [her] sex."[1] Governor Winthrop and the established religious hierarchy considered her comments to be heretical, i.e. unfounded criticism of the clergy from an unauthorized source.
In August of 1637 she was condemned by a conference of ministers.[2] She was then tried by the General Court of Massachusetts, presided over by Winthrop, on the charge of “traducing the ministers.” She was found guilty at her civil trial under Winthrop, and put under house arrest to await her religious trial, after which she was to be banished from the colony.
In March 1638, the First Church in Boston voted to excommunicate her for dissenting from Puritan orthodoxy. They accused Hutchinson of blasphemy and of lewd conduct, for having men and women in her house at the same time during her Sunday meetings.
[edit] Modern interpretation of events
Upheld equally as a symbol of religious freedom, liberal thinking and feminism, Anne Hutchinson is a contentious figure, too. She has been in turn lionized, mythologized and demonized by various individuals. 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 cofounded an American colony, Rhode Island, with Roger Williams.
[edit] Role of women in Puritan society
Hutchinson may have been brought down because of her gender; other 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. In addition, she welcomed men into her home, an unusual act in a Puritan society.
[edit] 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 rather than her radical teachings.
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." 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.
[edit] Hutchinson's modern memorials
Some literary critics trace the character of Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter to Hutchinson's persecution in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Hawthorne linked his heroine to Anne Hutchinson in his novel, according to Hutchinson's recent biographer Eve LaPlante, in "American Jezebel" (Harper, 2004).
In southern New York State, the Hutchinson River, one of the very few rivers named after a woman, and the Hutchinson River Parkway are her most prominent namesakes. Elementary schools,such as in the town of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and in the Westchester County towns of Pelham and Eastchester are other examples.
[edit] Descendants
Among her notable descendants are Presidents of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, First Ladies Lucretia Garfield and Frances Cleveland, actors Chevy Chase and Ted Danson, actresses Marilyn Monroe and Jane Wyatt, writers Louis Stanton Auchincloss, Dubose Heyward, Robert Lowell and John P. Marquand, Attorney General Elliot Richardson, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Chief Justice Melville Weston Fuller, commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, Senator Stephen Arnold Douglas, and former Massachusetts governor and 2008 U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney. (See: Eve LaPLante, "American Jezebel", San Francisco, 2005; Gary Boyd Roberts, "The Royal Descents of 600 Immigrants, etc." Baltimore, 2006, pp. 278-281.)
[edit] Memorial
In front of the State House in Boston, Massachusetts, a statue stands of Anne Hutchinson with her daughter Susannah, 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. (See: William Dunlea, Anne Hutchinson and the Puritans: An Early American Tragedy, Dorrance, 1993; Evan T. Pritchard, Native New Yorkers, Council Oak, 2002.)
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 [1][3]
In 1987, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis pardoned Anne Hutchinson, revoking the order of banishment by Governor Winthrop 350 years earlier.
[edit] Bibliography
- Battis, Emery. Saints and Sectaries. University of North Carolina Press, 1962.
- 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.")
- Dunlea, William. Anne Hutchinson And The Puritans: An Early American Tragedy. Dorrance Publishing, 1993. 286 pp.
- 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)
[edit] Other References
- ^ a b Anne Hutchinson by Peter Gomes. Harvard Magazine November 2002. Accessed February 13, 2007.
- ^ The Trial of Anne Hutchinson Accessed February 13, 2007.
- ^ Anne Hutchinson - Notable Women Ancestors at Rootsweb.Com, a genealogy site. Accessed February 13, 2007.
www.evelaplante.com - website of author of AMERICAN JEZEBEL: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans (Harper, 2004)
[edit] Primary sources
- Hall, David D., ed. The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History. Second Edition. Duke University Press, 1990
- LaPlante, Eve. "American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans." 2004. 336 pp.
- Bremer, Francis J., ed. Anne Hutchinson, Troubler of the Puritan Zion. 1980. 152 pp.
