Who was Anne Hutchinson? Why was she so important, and why did she get kicked out of Massachusetts?
Hutchinson was a wife, mother, midwife, and groupie of John Cotton who followed the minister to Massachusetts. She hosted religious meetings in her home questioning the preaching of many of New England’s ministers. Her followers started disrupting church services around the colony and so she was hauled before the magistrates to repent both her beliefs and her influence. She believed she had heard the voice of God, which was heresy. Not backing down, the magistrates expelled her from Massachusetts. She went on to found a settlement in Rhode Island. I think, like Williams, she sticks out as having been born too early. Like him, she practiced freedom of speech before this right existed. How did she die? Why do millions of residents of the New York City metropolitan area encounter her name every day without realizing it? After her husband died in Rhode Island, she settled with her children in New Netherland in what is now the Bronx. The local Indians were at war with the Dutch, and Hutchin
