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Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643)

Courage ahead of her time By ELIZABETH RAU Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer Valerie Debrule came across Anne Hutchinson's name in the history books several years ago while she was volunteering at the Newport Historical Society. "The more I read, the more fascinated I got," says Debrule, a Newport artist. "It's like she wouldn't go away." How could she resist such a courageous woman? A 17th-century religious leader who challenged the strict orthodoxy of the Puritans and their male hegemony; who established the first women's group in America; who gave birth to 14 children, the last when she was in her mid-40s; who was branded the "mother of a monster" after a false pregnancy, and who fled to the woods of New York State with her family, only to be slaughtered by Indians. "So much cruelty was inflicted on her, but she really stood her ground," Debrule says. "It was incredible for a woman from that time to have a public voice and a definite personality outside her husband's."

Debrule, a member of DeBois Gallery in Newport, read books and scholarly essays about Hutchinson, kept a scrapbook on her and even painted her picking blueberries and trudging through tall grass on the shores of Aquidneck Island, where Hutchinson lived for four years. She told her friends about her discovery and they took a fancy to Hutchinson, too. They were surprised, however, to find out that there was no memorial on the island for one of its most famous residents. They decided that she deserved one, and, apparently, other women from the community agreed. On April 27, Debrule and her friends will gather at Founders Brook in Portsmouth to unveil a bronze plaque honoring Hutchinson as "wife, mother, midwife, visionary, spiritual leader and original settler."

What will follow next will be even more special -- they'll bury a scroll dedicated to Hutchinson and signed by more than 150 women. Men also donated money for the plaque and some signed their mother's name on the scroll, but women have been the driving force behind the project. That doesn't surprise Debrule. After all, Hutchinson's great gift was her ability to bring women together in a common cause. Much has been written about Hutchinson since her death in 1643, some of it unflattering. Old history books depict her as unwomanly and unstable, a scheming "New England Jezebel" whose contributions to theology were negligible. It wasn't until the late 20th century that historians started to re-examine her, with some concluding that she played a far greater role in the decline of Puritanism than previously thought and others maintaining that she was persecuted because she was a woman. The daughter of a contentious Anglican clergyman, Anne Marbury was born in England around 1594 during intense political and religious unrest.

When King James I ascended to the throne, he fastened his grip on the country's churches, trying, in essence, to make them another branch of the state. His actions angered dissenters and sparked splinter groups, such as the Puritans. In 1612, a year after her father died, Marbury married William Hutchinson, a prosperous cloth merchant, and they settled in Alford, her childhood home. The Hutchinsons started traveling to a nearby town to hear the sermons of Puritan minister John Cotton, who soon won them as converts. Cotton was expelled from his position for his Puritan beliefs and in 1633 left England to join Puritan exiles in Boston. Distressed, Anne told her family that God instructed her in a revelation to follow Cotton.

A year later, in 1634, she left for New England with her husband -- who, according to Notable American Women, "unstintingly favored the inclinations of her firm will" throughout the marriage -- a brood of children and the equivalent of a half-million dollars. William Hutchinson prospered in the cloth trade, and the couple, one of about 200 families living in Boston at the time, joined Cotton's church. Anne soon befriended women she met through her work as a midwife. "She was rather bubbly," says historian and writer Paul F. Eno of Cumberland. "She was very positive, and she was a born leader." In 17th-century New England, women were excluded from most religious and government affairs.

Whether Anne Hutchinson resented this or wanted to "fill a vacuum," Eno says, she started holding meetings for women at her house to talk about Cotton's sermons. Initially, she won the respect of Puritan leaders. But when she started espousing religious views that were radically different from their own, they labeled her a troublemaker. Hutchinson preached that one could achieve salvation through a direct intuition from God. Puritan leaders argued salavation could be achieved only by obeying the laws of the church and government.

To Hutchinson, the church's view was a corruption of the true spirit of the Puritan movement and would produce a colony of hypocrites, pious only on the outside, according to historian William McLoughlin, in his essay, "Anne Hutchinson Reconsidered." But Puritan leaders feared that her beliefs would undermine the church organization and erode the rigid social order. They labeled her group the Antinominians, or the lawless ones. In 1637, she was arrested and tried for sedition. Most scholars agree the trial was a travesty. "I doe cast you out and in the name of Christ I doe deliver you up to Sathan . . ." said John Wilson, a Puritan elder, after her conviction. He ordered her "as a leper" to leave the congregation. "The Lord judgeth not as man judgeth," she replied. "Better to be cast out of the church than to deny Christ." The following year she was thrown out of the Bay Colony. The Hutchinsons and their children and about 18 of their followers traveled to Providence, a haven for religious dissenters.

There, she met up with Roger Williams, who founded Providence in 1636 after also being banished from the Bay Colony for his religious views. Williams, who was friendly with the Indians, bought Aquidneck Island from the Narragansett Indians, and the Hutchinsons and their followers settled in what is today Portsmouth. At that time, Rhode Island was sparsely-populated, with only a handful of settlements. (In 1639, for instance, only 93 people were living in Newport.) Rhode Islanders made their living chiefly in farming, and later, coastal trading. It was in Portsmouth -- then known as Pocasset -- that Hutchinson had a "menopausal pregnancy which, according to a modern interpretation of a doctor's report, was aborted into a hydatidiform mole and expelled with great difficulty in the late summer," according to Notable American Women.

The Puritan clergy in Boston wasted no time attacking her as the "mother of a monster." "The misogyny was there," Debrule says. During her four years in Portsmouth, Hutchinson continued teaching theology in her home and denounced the church when it tried to persuade her to admit that she was wrong. But religious instability prevailed even in Hutchinson's new settlement. The colony quarreled, prompting some to move to the southern end of the island to found Newport. In 1642, William Hutchinson -- "Anne's anchor through the years of controversy," McLoughlin says -- died. Fearing that the Boston authorities would try to gain control of Rhode Island and apprehend her, Hutchinson and her unmarried children moved to the Dutch colony of New Netherland, settling in what is today Pelham Bay Park in New York.

Unfortunately, the Dutch angered the Indians on Long Island, who revolted the following year and destroyed many of the settlements, including Hutchinson's. Hutchinson and all but one of her children were slaughtered. Susanna, out picking berries at the time of the massacre, was captured by the Indians, but was later ransomed and released. Hutchinson has plenty of admirers in Rhode Island, who interpret her differently depending on their own experiences. "I love her dearly," Eno says. "She really had guts. To come out and oppose the ruling clergy who ruled the roost was a dangerous thing to do." Jane Lancaster, a history teacher at The Lincoln School, says Hutchinson was "very bloody-minded, in that she wouldn't be told what to do. She followed what she believed was right theologically." Victoria Williams, of Newport, a psychotherapist and artist, says Hutchinson was "in a way, a 17th-century psychologist." "She was a healer," says Williams. "She listened to women's stories . . . she worked with women." And Judith Landers, of Portsmouth, a home economics and history teacher, says Hutchinson was "modern as a woman in the sense that she challenged authority."

But she was no feminist, some scholars say. "She's been taken over as a feminist heroine, which I think is fine, but I don't think she is really," Lancaster says. "The way she saw herself was a religious dissenter who was just following what she thought was right. She wasn't striking out for women, it was her God." Whether her motives were religious or political, she appeals to many women today who identify with her struggles in a culture that was dominated by men. "You can't help but be drawn to a strong woman, an admirable woman," says Rodie Siegler of Middletown, a painter and sculptor who signed the scroll. "Women like that move your heart . . . Women don't get enough credit and you want to see them get the credit. You want to see them held up as examples for our children." Debrule and her friends will bolt the plaque for Hutchinson to a rock that resembles a woman in repose and plant a garden of medicinal herbs, in honor of her work as a midwife and mother.

The scroll will bear the inscription: "To the memory of Anne Marbury Hutchinson from the women who won't forget." Nor will they forget her memorial. Women from the community, Debrule says, have already volunteered to tend the garden. SOURCES: Rhode Island's Joan of Arc, by Paul F. Eno; Anne Hutchinson Reconsidered and Rhode Island: A History, by William G. McLoughlin; Unafraid: A Life of Anne Hutchinson, by Winnifred King Rugg; The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638, David D. Hall, editor, and Notable American Women, published by Harvard University.