Anne Hutchinson was very ill after her incarceration in the Weld house. Yet, the likes of Winthrop and Dudley had little compassion for her. The harsh winter was coming to an end. People wanted to get out of their houses, so it was time for a show trial.
Most of Anne’s family were gone to help their father in the new settlement at Pocasset. Her son Edward and son-in-law Thomas Savage were both part of the recently formed Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts (they would play a large part in King Philip’s War), both had signed the Portsmouth Compact (as we now refer to it), and both had stayed with their families to give comfort to Anne. Edward and family would occupy the Hutchinson home, so that their Boston neighbors would not claim-jump the home after their parents’ banishment.
Anne’s sister Catherine Marbury Scott and her husband Richard Scott (my wife’s 9th Great-Grandparents) came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony prior to the arrival of the Hutchinson’s. They were also some of the first to move to Roger Williams’ settlement of Providence Plantations.
The Scotts were some of the first to convert to the Baptist theology and later the first in the colony to embrace George Fox’s Quakerism (we’ll get into that in another post). Somehow, so-far, they had managed to keep their distance from the Antinomian Controversy, yet they traveled to Boston for the trial. Richard was determined to testify in defense of Anne, regardless of the consequence.
One of Anne’s accusers Rev. Thomas Shephard came all the way from Cambridge, then called Newtowne, to be sure Anne was found guilty (likely a relative of mine, though I won’t take the effort to make that connection). He was influential at Harvard College, and he is the ancestor of President John Quincy Adams through Adams’ mother, First Lady Abigail Adams. Shephard is also the 7th GGF of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The last thing I’ll say about Shephard is his hatred for Anne may have come from his mother dying when he was just a child, and perhaps the abuse he incurred from his step-mother. He was no luckier in starting his own family as both his wives died and some of his children. Hard to imagine anyone being more bitter.
I can’t say whether it was Anne’s looks, her raw magnetism, or likely a combination of things, but it seems the men, and no doubt many of the women, around her were either completely smitten by Anne or filled with loathing for her. In the case of Rev. Cotton, and a number of others, I would postulate they suffered from both afflictions.
Early accounts of Anne Hutchinson seem to paint her as either an angel from heaven or a succubus from the nether. Sometimes she is painted as a little of both, which may be closer to the truth of things. Either way, we can only conjecture, and we know how this ends, so let’s skip to the very end of the trial.
Rev. John Cotton, who Anne had followed all the way from Boston, Lincolnshire, claimed if she had not already cheated on her husband with other men, it was certainly in her future. Rev. Shepherd accused her of seducing the masses, including women. Finally, the Reverend Wilson announced she was to be cast forth from the congregation as a Leper. She was excommunicado, as they would say in John Wick.
A brave young woman named Mary Dyer, whose husband signed the Portsmouth Compact, went to Anne and held her hand in defiance. The two marched hand in hand from the trial, but Anne could not leave without giving these pious men one last bitter pill to swallow.
As her final adieu, Anne turned and proclaimed, “The Lord judgeth not as man judgeth. Better to be cast out of the Church, than to deny Christ!”
Double snaps.
I’m sure there was no doubt in the minds of Anne’s remaining followers that a quick exit from Boston town was most prudent. Anne Hutchinson was ill and some say pregnant, but with the entire group feeding off her boldness, the group shouldered their burdens and began the long hike to Pocasset.
I’ve heard Anne referred to as a “familist” or even an “anarchist”. As I joked in the Roger Williams blog, he did sound very much like an anarcho-capitalist, and William Hutchinson seemed to carry the exact same politics (I’m picturing Michael Malice in a pilgrim hat).
Unfortunately for their unity, it didn’t take long for some of the more capitalist minded of their anarcho-capitalist commune to decide the settlement they wanted needed a bit more structure and a much better port. On April 28, 1639, these men met to sign a new Compact, and on May 1st, they boarded some sort of sailing vessel, and scoured the coast until they found their ideal location and their new port, which they named Newport (I guess the creatives had stayed back in Pocasset).
The Narragansett kept a summer village on the site, so Newport was move-in ready. I’m not sure what Coggeshall, Coddington, and William Brenton, probably the three richest men in the colony, had to give the Narragansett for the village. Many say it was included in the original deal for Pocasset. I’m unsure of the deal, but I am sure it was no great burden for these fellows.
It seems at first there was some bitterness between Newport and Pocasset, or Portsmouth, as it would soon be christened, but in 1640 the towns came together to pass a mutual set of laws and sign another Pact. They voted Coddington for Governor and Brenton as Deputy Governor, and declared their new government a “Democracie”.
We discussed in the Roger Williams blog post his return to England in the mid-1640’s, where he petitioned Henry Vane the Younger for a Charter. This would discourage the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Connecticut Colony from invading, but it could not keep the people within the colony from fighting. William Dyer, whose land was adjacent to Coddington’s, would sue William Coddington on more than one occasion. Once he even brought suit saying Coddington had murdered his prized mare?
Coddington would eventually travel to England to have all the settlements of Rhode Island chartered together and himself placed in charge as Governor for Life, which obviously caused more division and trips to England to argue over the charter and the governorship.
Meanwhile, in 1641 William Hutchinson had been elected Governor of Portsmouth at the behest of his wife. He would not last long in the position as he died that summer.
The constant squabbling amongst neighbors of their “utopia” saddened Anne Hutchinson and her friends the Throckmorton’s. As a result, John Throckmorton (my wife’s 9th GGF) petitioned the Dutch council of New Netherlands, which we now refer to as the Bronx, NY, for a land grant.
The Dutch, who had been suffering constant raids from Natives such as the Siwanoy tribe as well as the Wiechquaeskecks (also called the Manhattan), perhaps felt it would help to have the buffer of an English settlement between them and the Natives. They granted Throckmorton the land for his settlement in an area called Vreedlandt, or “Freedom Land”.
The Throckmorton’s, along with Anne Hutchinson and a handful of her devout followers and their families, built their new settlement along the East River on a peninsula they called Throg’s Neck (for Throgmorton, as the name was pronounced in Elizabethan English). The creek that ran through the settlement is still called Hutchinson’s Creek (or River) in the Bronx, and I believe everyone is familiar with the Throg’s Neck Bridge in NYC?
John Throckmorton constructed a sort of garrisoned compound, and the impressed Dutch signed his patent July 6, 1643. I’m not sure if John was aware the Dutch had attacked Native villages only months before, but more than one tribe was looking for revenge.
Days after receiving his official land patent from the Dutch, a band of Siwanoy approached the settlement. Now the Narragansett tribe who lived near and sometimes among the settlers of Rhode Island had been friendly to the colonists, so when these Natives approached the Hutchinson home, pretending to be friendly, Anne welcomed them as guests.
The Siwanoy were allies of the English. Some could speak English and had even converted to Christianity. The leader of the band, Wampage Jackson… sorry, couldn’t help myself…no, just Wampage, was one such Christian.
Moments later, the Native’s set upon Anne’s son Francis, killing and scalping him in front of Anne. Then, like devils, they went after Anne, the children, their servants and houseguests, splitting skulls and hacking them to bits. Wampage personally executed Anne, and later took her name as his own, calling himself Anne Hoeck, in commemoration.
The only survivor was ten year old Susanna Hutchinson who was away picking berries when she heard the massacre. She hid in the cleft of a glacial rock formation we call Split Rock (still in the Bronx, but difficult to reach and often graffitied, unless something has changed), but was later caught and would become the wife of a Siwanoy chief. She was renamed “Autumn Leaf” because of the color of her hair, and she lived with the tribe for so long that when she was finally rescued by Dutch traders, she had forgotten how to speak English.
The war band then moved toward the Throckmorton compound, killing any men, women, or children they met on the way. Fortunately, John Throckmorton and the men with his party were now forewarned. They managed to hold off Chief Wampage and the Siwanoy until the women and children could be loaded onto a boat that was said to have been passing on the East River when it witnessed the ongoing attack and came to the rescue.
There has been much speculation that the attack was coordinated by enemies of Anne Hutchinson and John Throckmorton in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Seems word of the attack arrived in Boston before any of the survivors.
One Bostonian, whose name I won’t speak here (I would spit but I’m in my office), spread the tale as if he had been an eye-witness, which he very possibly was. This “person” was known as an outspoken critic of Anne Hutchinson, and speaking of which, John Cotton and his fellow reverends had nothing but great things to say about the slaughter. If they had played some part, large or small, I would not be surprised in the least.
Susanna Hutchinson would marry Stephen Cole after her rescue from the Siwanoy. She is the 4th GGM of Stephen Douglas, who famously debated Abe Lincoln.
https://katherinekirkpatrick.com/category/susanna-hutchinson-daughter-of-anne-hutchinson/
Anne Hutchinson was maligned by some in the past, but held up as a heroine by many others. Today she is considered a feminist icon, which of course would have made her haters even hotter.
I doubt Anne knew this exactly, but she was a direct descendant of many Kings and warriors: Charlemagne (27th GGF), Alfred the Great (25th GGF, did you watch “The Last Kingdom” on Netflix?), William the Conqueror (18th GGF), Henry III (14th GGF), and the list goes on. I’m just saying maybe Anne was born to be a fighter.
PS. Speaking of fighters, Anne Hutchinson is the 9th Great-grandmother of Elisabeth Shue from The Karate Kid (1984). Just thought I’d throw that in there.
