Blog

---

By Jesse and James Bruchac

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.[1] 

Anne Marbury Hutchinson considered the most famous and influential English woman in colonial America, was a key figure in the history of religious freedom in England's American colonies and the history of women in ministry and midwifery, challenging the authority of ministers and doctors alike. Anne Hutchinson is also our 10th maternal great-grandmother, not once, but twice, due to the marriage of first cousins Noah Ransdell and Elizabeth Cole (see below). She comes to us via our late mom Carol Worthen's family lines, which comes as little surprise, as our mother was a woman who shared Anne's spirit in so many profoundly powerful ways.  

She is honored by Massachusetts with a State House monument calling her a "courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration." Historian Michael Winship, the author of two books about her, has called her "the most famous—or infamous—English woman in colonial American history."

• Anne Marbury Hutchinson (1591-1643)
• Susanna Hutchinson Cole (1633-1713) + John Cole (1625-1707)
• William Cole (1671-1734) + Ann Pinder (1675-1734)
• Susannah Cole (1708-1804) + Thomas Hubbard (1704-1744)
• Richard James Cole (1729-1814) + Ann Hubbard (1730-1795)
• Sarah Ann Cole (?) + John Ransdell (1760-?)
• Noah Ransdell (1792-1872) + Elizabeth Cole (1799-1880) 
• Cordelia Ransdall (1831-1875) + Milford Campbell (1828-1870)
• Daura Campbell (1865-1954) + Albert Jefferson Woolman (1861-1918)
• Xenia May Woolman (1885-1948) + Edmund Louis Worthen (1882-1965) 

• Anne Marbury Hutchinson (1591-1643)
• Susanna Hutchinson Cole (1633-1713) + John Cole (1625-1707)
• William Cole (1671-1734) + Ann Pinder (1675-1734)
• Susannah Cole (1708-1804) + Thomas Hubbard (1704-1744)
• Richard James Cole (1729-1814) + Ann Hubbard (1730-1795)
• Jesse James Cole (1770-1857) + Nancy Sparks (1770-?)
• Elizabeth Cole (1799-1880) + Noah Ransdell (1792-1872) 
• Cordelia Ransdall (1831-1875) + Milford Campbell (1828-1870)
• Daura Campbell (1865-1954) + Albert Jefferson Woolman (1861-1918)
• Xenia May Woolman (1885-1948) + Edmund Louis Worthen (1882-1965)

Although revered in modern times, the clergy in early 17th century Massachusetts Bay felt that Anne was a threat to the entire Puritan experiment. She was a prominent figure in the Antinomian Controversy, also known as the Free Grace Controversy, which was a religious and political conflict in the Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638. It pitted most of the colony's ministers and magistrates against some adherents of Puritan minister John Cotton (ironically also a relative, John Cotton is our maternal 9th great-grandfather—more on him soon). They arrested Anne for heresy. In her trial she argued intelligently with John Winthrop, but the court found her guilty and banished her from Massachusetts Bay in 1637.

Hutchinson and many of her supporters established the settlement of Portsmouth, Rhode Island with encouragement from Providence Plantations founder Roger Williams in what became the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

Like Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams was seen as a threat to Massachusetts Bay. His ideas of religious freedom and fair dealings with the Native Americans had resulted in his exile from the Massachusetts colony as well. 

After her husband's death a few years later, threats of Massachusetts annexing Rhode Island compelled Hutchinson to move totally outside the reach of Boston, into New Netherland.

Five of her older surviving children remained in New England or in England, while she settled with her younger children near an ancient landmark, Split Rock, in what later became The Bronx in New York City. 

The local Algonquian speaking Siwanoy were openly displeased with the settlement being formed there. The property been “secured“ by an agent of the Dutch West India Company in 1640, but the negotiation was transacted in distant Norwalk, and the local Indigenous community likely had little to do with that transaction, if they even knew of it at all. Hutchinson was therefore taking a considerable risk in putting a permanent dwelling at this site

Mrs. Hutchinson had a good relationship with the Narragansetts in Rhode Island, and she may have felt a false sense of safety among the Siwanoy of New Netherland. The Hutchinsons had been friendly to them, but the Siwanoy were part of a much larger series of incidents instigated by the inept leadership of Director-General Willem Kieft.

Dutch settlers, instigated by Kieft's actions, launched assaults on Native communities, leading to a unified resistance among Algonquian tribes. The Massacre at Pavonia in February 1643 marked a turning point, igniting widespread retaliation from Indigenous tribes and intensifying the cycle of violence. 

In August 1643, Hutchinson, six of her children, and other household members were killed by Siwanoys during The Wappinger War. The only survivor was her nine-year-old daughter Susanna (our 9th maternal great-grandmother, twice—more on her soon too), who was taken captive. According to legend, Susanna hid in the crevice of Split Rock nearby. She was taken captive, was named "Autumn Leaf" by one account, and lived with the Siwanoy for up to six years (accounts vary) until ransomed back to her family members, most of whom were living in Boston.

The reaction in Massachusetts to Anne Hutchinson's death was harsh. The Reverend Thomas Weld wrote, "The Lord heard our groans to heaven, and freed us from our great and sore affliction.... I never heard that the Indians in those parts did ever before this commit the like outrage upon any one family or families; and therefore God's hand is the more apparently seen herein, to pick out this woeful woman". Peter Bulkley, the pastor at Concord, wrote, "Let her damned heresies, and the just vengeance of God, by which she perished, terrify all her seduced followers from having any more to do with her leaven."

Chieftain of the Siwanoys, Wampage claimed to have slain Hutchinson, and legend has it that he assumed her name after the massacre, calling himself "Anne Hoeck" to be honored by using the name of his most famous victim. Eleven years after the event, he confirmed a deed transferring the Hutchinsons' property to Thomas Pell, with his name on the document being given as "Ann Hoeck alias Wampage".

Winship calls Hutchinson "a prophet, spiritual adviser, mother of fifteen, and important participant in a fierce religious controversy that shook the infant Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638", upheld as a symbol of religious freedom, liberal thinking, and Christian feminism. Anne Hutchinson is a contentious figure, having been lionised, mythologised, and demonised by various writers. 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. As to her overall historical impact, Winship writes, "Hutchinson's well-publicized trials and the attendant accusations against her made her the most famous, or infamous, English woman in colonial American history." Anne Hutchinson was throughout her life a "courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration."

According to Hutchinson biographer Eve LaPlante, some literary critics trace the character of Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" to Hutchinson's persecution in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Historian Amy Lang wrote that Hester Prynne was the embodiment of a fictional Anne Hutchinson—a Hutchinson created by the early Puritan chroniclers. Lang notes that Hester was what orthodox Puritans said Hutchinson was, either in reality or at least spiritually. The parallel is that Hutchinson was the heretic who metaphorically seduced the Puritan community, while in Hawthorne's novel Hester Prynne literally seduced the minister of her community. Hawthorne noted that “The Scarlet Letter“ was inspired by John Neal's 1828 novel “Rachel Dyer,“ in which Hutchinson's fictional granddaughter is a victim of the Salem witch trials. Hutchinson appears in the opening chapters as a martyr connected to the later martyrs of the witch hysteria.

Anne Hutchinson and her political struggle with Governor Winthrop are depicted in the 1980 play “Goodly Creatures“ by William Gibson. Other notable historical characters who appear in the play are Reverend John Cotton, Governor Harry Vane, and future Quaker martyr Mary Dyer. 

Anne Hutchinson's descendants go far beyond our Worthen lines, including notable figures such as United States Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, presidential aspirants Stephen A. Douglas, George W. Romney, and Mitt Romney. Her grandson Peleg Sanford was a governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Other descendants include Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court Melville Weston Fuller. Lord Chancellor of England John Singleton Copley Jr., who was the first Lord Lyndhurst; President of Harvard University Charles William Eliot; actor Ted Danson. Thomas Hutchinson, her great-great grandson, was a loyalist Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay at the time of the Boston Tea Party, an event leading to the American Revolutionary War; along with other prominent individuals spanning politics, law, academia, and the arts.

[1] Anne Hutchinson ca. 1591-1643, Debra Michals, PhD | 2015   

Rogers, Jay (4 April 2008). "America's Christian Leaders: Anne Hutchinson". The Forerunner. Retrieved 20 July 2011.

Kirkpatrick, Katherine (1998). Trouble's Daughter, the Story of Susanna Hutchinson, Indian Captive. New York: Delacorte Press.

Augur, Helen (1930). An American Jezebel: The Life of Anne Hutchinson. New York: Brentano's. online free

"Anne Marbury Hutchinson (1591–1643)". Rhode Island government. Retrieved 16 October 2012.

Battis, Emery (1962). Saints and Sectaries: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Battis, Emery (1981). "Mrs. Hutchinson's Behavior in Terms of Menopausal Symptoms". In Bremer, Francis J (ed.). Anne Hutchinson: Troubler of the Puritan Zion. Huntington, New York: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company. pp. 16–17.

Bremer, Francis J. Anne Hutchinson, Troubler of the Puritan Zion (1981)

Curtis, Edith Roelker (1930). Anne Hutchinson: A Biography. Cambridge: Washburn & Thomas.

Ditmore, Michael G. (2000). "A Prophetess in Her Own Country: an Exegesis of Anne Hutchinson's 'Immediate Revelation". William and Mary Quarterly. 57 (2): 349–392. doi:10.2307/2674479. JSTOR 2674479. The article includes an annotated transcription of Hutchinson's "Immediate Revelation."

Gura, Philip F. (1984). A Glimpse of Sion's Glory: Puritan Radicalism in New England, 1620–1660. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 0-8195-5095-7.

Hall, Timothy D. Anne Hutchinson: Puritan Prophet (Library of American Biography 2009).

Huber, Elaine C. (1985). Women and the Authority of Inspiration: A Re-examination of Two Movements from a Contemporary Feminist Perspective. Lantham, Massachusetts: University Press of America.

Humpherey, Grace (1919). Women in American History. Freeport, New York: Bobbs-Merrill.

Stille, Darlene R. Anne Hutchinson: Puritan protester (2006) for middle and secondary schools. online

Westerkamp, Marilyn J. (2021). The Passion of Anne Hutchinson: An Extraordinary Woman, the Puritan Patriarchs, and the World They Made and Lost. New York: Oxford University Press.

Williams, Selma R. (1981). Divine Rebel: The Life of Anne Marbury Hutchinson.