
Anne Hutchinson (July 1591-August 1643) was an Puritan religious leader in New England during the 17th century. She was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for her dissenting views against the Puritan establishment, and she helped Roger Williams with establishing Rhode Island. She was killed in a Native American attack on The Bronx during Kieft's War.
Biography[]
Anne Marbury was born in Alford, Lincolnshire, England in 1591, the daughter of Anglican cleric Francis Marbury. She was well educated by her father, and she lived in London as a young adult, marrying William Hutchinson there. They moved back to Alford, where they began following the radical preacher John Cotton, and the Hutchinsons followed him in emigrating to the Americas in 1634. She settled into her new home in Boston with her fourteen children and husband, and she became a midwife to her neighbors' children. She began to lecture twice a week, and crowds of sixty to eighty men and women listened to her speak. She stressed the idea that people could be saved only through God's grace, and she claimed that works could not change God's plan for humans. In 1637, Governor John Winthrop denounced her as a heretic, and she was formally excommunicated in 1638. She was banished with her family, and she settled in Rhode Island with Roger Williams. After her husband died, the Massachusetts Bay Colony threatened to take over Rhode Island, so Hutchinson moved to New Netherland, settling in The Bronx. In August 1643, Hutchinson, six of her children, and other household members were massacred by Native Americans during Kieft's War.