September 25, 2004

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  Our Lady of the Hutch

  
  

  By EVE LaPLANTE
  
  Published: September 19, 2004

  
  

  Anne Hutchinson was born in England in 1591. The daughter of a midwife and a Puritan preacher, she grew up to be both. While a woman could not preach in public, some well-respected Puritan women did run Scripture-study groups for other women. Hutchinson did this in England and, after 1634, in Massachusetts, where she landed with her large family during the Great Migration.

  
  

   Once a week, in her parlor, she interpreted Scripture and discussed Puritan theology before a growing audience of women and, eventually, men. At a time when women could not vote, hold public office or teach outside the home, she attracted a following of prominent citizens eager for social reform.

  
  

   

  
  

  Stung by the challenge she posed as a woman wielding political and religious power, Gov. John Winthrop called her before the Massachusetts General Court on a charge of heresy. Hutchinson defended herself brilliantly, but the judges, faced with a perceived threat to public order, banished her for behaving in a manner not fitting for her sex. Through the winter they kept her prisoner. In March 1638, the First Church of Christ in Boston tried and excommunicated her.

  
  

  

  
  

  Undeterred, Hutchinson, who was 46 and pregnant for the 16th time, set out in thigh-deep snow with 50 of her followers to found Rhode Island, six days away by foot. The later Colony of Rhode Island united her Rhode Island with Roger Williams's Providence Plantation.

  
  

  After her husband's death, she petitioned Dutch authorities, who were more tolerant than the English of religious dissent, for permission to build a house above Pelham Bay, near the Split Rock. New Amsterdam welcomed her and her seven younger children. The next year, her Dutch neighbors warned her to abandon her farmhouse because of a coming raid by Siwanoy Indians. Hutchinson, who had opposed the Pequot War and all other English efforts to suppress the natives, refused to leave her house or bear arms.

  
  

  

  
  

  In 1643, Siwanoy warriors, surprised to find any settlers present, scalped the Hutchinsons and burned their bodies. Hutchinson was survived by five older children who lived elsewhere and 9-year-old Susan, who was out picking berries during the rampage. The Indians discovered the little girl hiding between the halves of the Split Rock and adopted her.

  
  

     

  
  

  Realizing the identity of his illustrious victim, the Siwanoy chief renamed himself Ann-Hoeck. The nearby river was given Anne's surname. Nathaniel Hawthorne modeled Hester Prynne, the heroine of "The Scarlet Letter," on Anne Hutchinson, whose descendants include three presidents: George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

  
  

  From thenarrator

  
  

   

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