This biography is reprinted in full with permission from the National Women’s History Museum (United States of America). It was edited by Edited by Debra Michals, PhD (2015). NWHM biographies are generously supported by Susan D. Whiting. All rights reserved.
Born: 1591, United Kingdom
Died: 1643
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
Considered one of the earliest American feminists, Anne Hutchinson was a spiritual leader in colonial Massachusetts who challenged male authority—and, indirectly, acceptable gender roles—by preaching to both women and men and by questioning Puritan teachings about salvation.
Anne Marbury Hutchinson was born in England, the daughter of dissident minister Francis Marbury and Bridget Dryden. She grew up in Alford in Lincolnshire, where her father taught her scripture. In 1612, she married William Hutchinson, a merchant and member of a prominent family. From 1614 to 1630, she gave birth to more than a dozen children.
Although, like many women of her era, she had no formal education, Hutchinson was an avid reader and thinker. She was inspired by Reverend John Cotton, vicar at the nearby Lincolnshire parish. After Cotton joined other religious dissidents in North America, Hutchinson’s family migrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Hutchinson was forty-three years old when she arrived in Boston in 1634. Trained as a midwife, Hutchinson developed strong ties to local women and began holding meetings with them in her home to discuss Cotton’s sermons. Gradually, the meetings shifted to critiques of Puritan beliefs about the Covenant of Works—the role of good works and adherence to religious law in salvation. Hutchinson, like Cotton, stressed salvation by God’s grace alone (the Covenant of Grace), and she disavowed the Puritan belief that good works were a sign of God’s grace. Soon her meetings became popular with men, including prominent men.
But Hutchinson’s popularity disturbed religious leaders—who were the true authority in the theocratic Bay Colony. Hutchinson was tried in 1637 for heresy. But the real issue was her defiance of gender roles—particularly that she presumed authority over men in her preaching. At a time when men ruled and women were to remain silent, Hutchinson asserted her right to preach, which her husband avidly supported. However, her former mentor, Reverend Cotton, turned on her, describing her meetings as a “promiscuous and filthy coming together of men and women…”
The real issue to those in power was that she dared to overstep her place as a woman, and they feared she would likewise inspire other women to rebel. They said she had “rather been a Husband than a Wife and a preacher than a Hearer; and a Magistrate than a Subject.” In asserting her rights, Hutchinson miscalculated when she told the court that she had received a direct revelation from God and that she could interpret the scriptures for herself. The assertion sealed her fate.
In March, 1638, Hutchinson was excommunicated and banished from the colony. The Hutchinsons moved to Roger Williams’ more liberal colony of Rhode Island. In 1642, following the death of her husband, Hutchinson relocated to the Dutch colony of New Netherlands (now New York), and settled on Long Island Sound. There, she and her family—with the exception of one daughter—were killed in an Indian massacre. Initially, historians thought the attack was in response to whites taking Indian lands, however, some historians also speculate that it may have been provoked by Puritans. Today a river and a highway in that area bear the Hutchinson name.
The following is excerpted from the Dictionary of National Biography, originally published between 1885 and 1900, by Smith, Elder & Co. It was written by Gordon Goodwin.
HUTCHINSON, Mrs. ANNE (1590?–1643), religious enthusiast, born in 1590 or 1591, was the daughter of Francis Marbury (d. 1610), a noted preacher, who, after officiating for a while in Lincolnshire, was preferred successively to the rectories of St. Martin Vintry, St. Pancras, Soper Lane, and St. Margaret, New Fish Street, London. About she married William Hutchinson of Alford, Lincolnshire. In 1633 her eldest son Edward accompanied the Rev. John Cotton to Massachusetts, and in September of the following year he was joined by his parents, Mrs. Hutchinson being a devoted admirer of Cotton’s preaching. She was well versed in the scriptures and theology, and maintained that those who were in the covenant of grace were entirely freed from the covenant of works. She also pretended to immediate revelation respecting future events. Under pretence of repeating the sermons of Cotton, she held meetings twice a week in Boston, which were attended by nearly a hundred women. There was a wide difference, she asserted, between Cotton’s ministry and that of the other Massachusetts clergy. The latter could not hold forth a covenant of free grace, because they had not the seal of the Spirit, so were not able ministers of the New Testament. In the dissemination of her doctrines she received vigorous support from her brother-in-law, the Rev. John Wheelwright. Her adherents, called antinomians, included Captain John Underbill, William Coddington, and other influential men; and when Cotton expressed disapproval of some of her views, they tried to elect Wheelwright as his associate. The agitation seriously affected the peace of the infant colony; it interfered with the levy of troops for the Pequot war; it influenced the respect shown to the magistrates and clergy, the distribution of town lots, and the assessment of taxes. On 30 Aug. 1637 an ecclesiastical synod at Boston condemned Mrs. Hutchinson’s doctrines, and in the ensuing November the general court arraigned her for not discontinuing her meetings as had been ordered. After two days’ trial, during which she defended herself with ability and spirit (cf. the report in Hutchinson’s Massachusetts Bay, vol. ii. Appendix), she was sentenced to banishment, but was allowed to winter at Roxbury. Along with her husband she accompanied William Coddington’s party, who settled on Aquidneck, now Rhode Island, in 1638, and founded a democracy. In 1642 William Hutchinson died, and his widow moved into the territory of the Dutch settling near Hell Gate, West Chester, co. New York. There in August or September 1643 she was murdered by Indians, together with her servants and all her children except one son, to the number of sixteen.
The following is excerpted from A Cyclopædia of Female Biography, published 1857 by Groomsbridge and Sons and edited by Henry Gardiner Adams.
A woman who caused much difficulty in New England soon after its settlement, went from Lincolnshire to Boston in 1635, and was the wife of one of the representatives of Boston. The members of Mr. Cotton’s church used to meet every week to repeat his sermons and discourse on doctrines. She established similar meetings for women, and soon had a numerous audience. She advocated sentiments of her own, and warped the discourses of the clergymen to coincide with them. She soon threw the whole colony into a flame. The progress of her sentiments occasioned, in 1637, the first synod in America. This convention of ministers condemned eighty-two erroneous opinions then propagated in the country. Mrs. Hutchinson was called before the court in November, 1637; and, being convicted of traducing the ministers and advancing errors, was banished from Massachusetts. She went with her husband to Rhode Island; and in 1642, after her husband’s death, removed into the Dutch colony beyond New Haven, where she, with most of her family, consisting of sixteen persons, were captured, and all, except one daughter, killed by the Indians. This occurred in 1643.
Read more (Wikipedia)
Read more (Women’s History Blog)
Works cited
Breslaw, Elaine G. “The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson.” The Historian 69.1 (2007): 131+. U.S. History in Context. Accessed February 1, 2015.
Gomes, Peter. “Anne Hutchinson: Brief Life of Harvard’s Midwife, 1595-1643.” Harvard Magazine. November-December 2002. Accessed February 1, 2015.
“Hutchinson, Anne.” UXL Encyclopedia of U.S. History. Sonia Benson, Daniel E. Brannen, Jr., and Rebecca Valentine. Vol. 4. Detroit: UXL, 2009. 736-738. U.S. History in Context. Accessed February 1, 2015.
Weatherford, Doris. American Women’s History: An A to Z of People, Organizations, Issues, and Events. New York: Macmillan General Reference, 1994.