| Notes |
- In April, 1996, Anne Hutchinson was honored by the dedication of a plaque which was placed at Founders Brook Park on Aquidneck Island (Portsmouth), Rhode Island. The plaque is the work of the Anne Hutchinson Memorial Committee, a group of Aquidneck Island volunteers led by Valerie DeBrule of Newport, who raised funds to pay for the plaque and surrounding medicinal herb garden.
The following article appeared in the Sakonnet Times in the April 25, 1996 edition.
Anne Hutchinson - Finally the Honor She Deserves
by James Garman
Anne Hutchinson played a vital role in the founding of a settlement at the northern end of Aquidneck Island that came to be known as Portsmouth.
According to local historian Edward H. West, residents of this state should realize the debt they owe Anne Hutchinson for "without her there would never have been a Rhode Island." While this accolade might be just a bit overdrawn, she did play an important role in the colony's founding.
Anne Marbury was born in England in 1591, the daughter of Francis Marbury, a loyal minister to the Anglican Church. In 1612 she married a London merchant, William Hutchinson. Ultimately they had 15 children.
The Hutchinsons followed a reform minister, the Rev. John Cotton, to Boston in 1634. Anne was popular among the women in Massachusetts Bay, whom she sometimes served as midwife. Boston was a fairly severe place dominated by the Puritan Church which saw the Bible as the source of all law. Anne gathered a group that would meet in her home and discuss issues of religion. She frequently would analyze and criticize the previous Sunday's sermon by Rev. Cotton or the Rev. John Wilson. The nature of Anne's criticism of the church revolved around their idea of salvation by works or deeds. She believed in salvation by grace, and therefore that one could not prepare to be saved. Many influential men of the Massachusetts Bay colony listened to her and became followers.
Anne and her supporters began to be referred to as "Antinomians" by their detractors. This term meant "against law." Their ideas were actually a return to the fundamental ideas of John Calvin in their belief that grace was more important than works.
Anne's husband William, meanwhile, had been elected a judge in Massachusetts Bay in 1635 and a deputy in 1636.
The pace of Anne's religious zeal accelerated. With her friend and associate, Mary Dyer, she walked out on a sermon by the Rev. John Wilson in Boston. She urged others to do the same when the ministers swayed from "the true course."
Ultimately, as the risk of the Massachusetts Bay colony splitting apart grew, there came to be accusations against Anne and her followers. Anne's brother-in-law, John Wheelwright, denounced the ministers and said that the wrath of God would descend on Massachusetts Bay unless there were changes. His outburst was claimed to be seditious and he was put on trial. Anne and about 70 of her followers signed a petition opposing Wheelwright's conviction. The signatories were forced to give up their weapons and they were threatened with banishment from the colony.
In November of 1637, Anne was put on trial, charged with "traducing the ministers and their ministry." In her dramatic defense she claimed that it had been revealed to her that the entire Massachusetts Bay Colony would be destroyed of the leaders continued to persecute her for speaking the truth.
Anne was convicted, imprisoned and sentenced to be banished from the colony along with a number of her supporters. The group of banished Bostonians gathered on March 7, 1638, and agreed to the following Compact for their new colony:
"We whose names are underwritten do here solemnly in the presence of Jehovah incorporate ourselves into a Bodie Politick and as he shall help, will submit our person, lives and estates unto our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and all those perfect and most absolute laws of his given us in his holy word of truth, to be guided and judged thereby."
Among those signing the Compact were William Coddington, one of the richest men in Boston, Dr. John Clarke, Samuel Gorton and William Hutchinson. A committee under Clarke had been searching for a site to which they could relocate, including Long Island and Delaware.
They met with Roger Williams who had himself been banished from Massachusetts Bay in 1636, establishing a settlement at Providence. With his help they bought Aquidneck Island from the Sachems of the Narragansett Indian tribe, Canonicus and Miantonomi. The price was 40 fathoms of white beads, 10 coats and 20 hoes. The first settlement was around the Town Pond in the vicinity of the Bay Pointe Inn today. Part of this pond still exists in that area, but the bay side was filled in during the 1940's.
The first recorded town meeting at Portsmouth was on March 13, 1638. There the construction of the first meeting house was authorized. This colony was led by William Coddington and, to a degree, the spiritual leadership of Anne Hutchinson. They, along with Samuel Gorton, each had their own followers.
The Portsmouth colony was based more on farming than on religion. Large farms were laid out early and commercial crops, especially corn, peas, beans and tobacco were grown and livestock was raised. It was not easy to be admitted as a freeman in this colony, because the increase in their numbers meant a potential reduction in the size of the existing farms.
Farming on Aquidneck Island was successful from the beginning, and it soon became evident that it would be necessary to develop a port to ship produce out. In addition, there developed religious differences between some of the leaders of the colony.
William Coddington had been a very wealthy man in Boston and among the political leaders there. He had been a member of the Boston Court that had expelled Roger Williams. Coddington was, in William's view "a worldly man" who was most concerned about his own profit and power. He later was to adopt the religious beliefs of the Quakers.
Because of the need for a deep water port and the religious differences, Coddington, Clarke, Nicholas Easton, William Baulston and five other leaders of the Portsmouth colony moved south in 1639 and established Newport. By the end of that first year, 93 people were residents of Newport, and its numbers were growing dramatically.
Meanwhile in Portsmouth, William Hutchinson was elected leader of the settlement. He seemed to be a mild-mannered man dominated by his wife, Anne. He was elected assistant to Governor Coddington of the Rhode Island Colony in 1640 and died in 1642.
His wife was afraid that the Massachusetts Bay authorities would try to gain control of the Portsmouth settlement. In 1643, therefore, she took the younger part of her family and moved to the Dutch Colony of New Netherlands (New York), settling at Pelham Bay (the Bronx today). Because the Dutch had antagonized nearby Indians that year, the Indians rose up an attacked settlements beyond the walled protection of New Amsterdam (New York City). Anne and all but one of her children were murdered by the Indians an 1643. The unharmed child was adopted by the Indians for a while.
Anne Hutchinson's role in the founding of Portsmouth was important. She was the lightning rod that attracted some of the most prominent men of Boston. It is noteworthy that although it was for religious reasons that they came here, there developed such differences that it does not appear that they constructed a church of any kind. It is known that Anne Hutchinson continued to hold religious services in her home while at Portsmouth.
There are differing opinions as to Anne's influence here. Edward West, writing in 1939, said, "While it is to Anne Hutchinson that the credit of the founding of Rhode lsland must be given, for it was the quality of her disarmed followers that led to the founding of a separate colony . . . more or less it is to William Coddington that the credit of the actual founding of the colony must be made, as it was through his wealth and influence . . . that other men of influence settled there."
In spite of this, however, the important role of Anne Hutchinson cannot be denied. After all it was she who led a group of her supporters to Aquidneck Island. She was a dynamic person, a woman of great faith and one whom others were willing to follow to this island in the wilderness.
She is worthy of being honored and the plaque being dedicated to her on April 27 is, in fact, a little more than three hundred years overdue.
Sources
Divine Rebel; Williams, Selma R.; Holt, Rinehart & Winston, NY, 1981
Demeter's Daughters, Women Who Founded America, 1587-1787; Williams, Selma R; pub. 1975
The English Ancestry of Anne Marbury Hutchinson and Katherine Marbury Scott; Colket, Meredith B.; The Mager Press, Phildelphia, PA; 1936
The Hutchinson Family of England and New England, and its Connection with the Marburys and Drydens; Joseph Lemuel; NEHGR Vol. XX, Oct. 1866
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1591 - 1643 (52 years)
