Anne Hutchinson

She got married to William Hutchinson, a fabric merchant, in 1612. The ceremony took place at St Mary Woolnoth Church in London.

Anne bore 15 children. Eleven of them survived to sail to New England and only the youngest daughter, Susanna survived the attack of the Indians.

Anne Hutchinson was born at Alfred in Linconshire, England, in the family of Francis Marbury and Bridget Dryden. She was baptised on 20th July, 1591.

She was born of her father’s second marriage and was the third of her parents’ fifteen children.

Anne Hutchison’s family stayed at her birthplace for the first 15 years of her life. She received education at home, from her father.

On 9th August, 1612, at the age of 21,she married William Hutchinson, a fabric merchant. The ceremony took place at St Mary Woolnoth Church in London.

Anne Hutchinson became deeply influenced by the preachings of John Cotton, a minister at Boston whose doctrine emphasized on ‘absolute grace’. Her husband’s brother-in-law John wheelwright too preached similarly. Inspired by their beliefs, Hutchinson began holding biweekly meetings at her place, where she talked about her own radical interpretations of the Bible.

In 1633, when John Cotton had to flee to New England, Hutchinson and her family followed him, a year later.

At Boston, they started staying at the Shawmut peninsula where Anne took up the role of a midwife. While assisting women in their childbirth, she also gave them spiritual advice.

Very soon, she started hosting meetings for conventicles at home and every week, over 60 people, both male and female, came in her place to discuss Cotton’s preachings. In these meetings, Hutchinson putforth her own viewpoint that through ‘an intuition of the spirit’ can one hope for salvation. Governor Vane was a frequent participant in these meetings too.

Her unorthodox sermons and preaching stirred the Puritan church and they accused her and her followers of Antinomianism which means practicing something which is opposed to the law of grace.

Anne Hutchison was the inspiration behind the fictional character of Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous novel ‘The Scarlet Letter’.

She has been depicted in William Gibson’s play, ‘Goodly Creatures’ while Dan Shore’s opera ‘Anne Hutchinson’ was performed twice in Boston, Massachusetts by the Intermezzo Opera Company in 2014.

Among the many descendants of Hutchison, the most notable are the US presidents Franklin Roosevelt, George H. W. Bush, the US politicians like Mitt Romney, Stephen A.Douglas, chief justice of the US supreme court, Melville Weston Fuller.

One statue of Hutchison stands in front of the State House in Boston while another stands at the corner of Beale St and Grandview Avenue in Quincy, Massachusetts.