Freedom or Puritan Rule
Anne Hutchinson was born in England during the year 1591. In 1634, she followed John Cotton to the New World and became a Puritan settler. During Anne’s time in the colonies, North American soil was not known as the land of the free and Puritans had strict religious rules to follow. After settling into her new home, Anne began to hold weekly meetings. In these meetings, she would rave about Cotton’s preaching and tell people that her brother-in-law, John Wheelwright, and herself were true Christians. She would also demand religious freedom and talk about scripture that the Puritan Church did not agree with.
After a few years, Anne Hutchinson’s weekly meetings grew to include about 80 men and women. At this point, the city officers knew they could not let, what they called foolishness, go on any longer. Anne was brought to trial with John Winthrop as leading judge. While John Cotton was not convicted of heresy, Anne did not fare so well. The General Court of Massachusetts convicted her of heresy, banned from the colony, and all ties with the Puritan church were broken.
After being banned from the Colony of Massachusetts, Anne walked to Rhode Island. It was here that Anne, with the help of family, established a colony with others who had been banned. While the colony continued to grow, Anne could no longer stay there once her husband passed away. After his death, Anne and her six children moved to Dutch, New York. It was here that Anne finally felt they could live without being under English control. Unfortunately, this freedom did not last long. In August of 1643, Anne and all but possibly one of her children were killed in a Native American Raid.
The story goes that while Anne was nice to the Native Americans, her settlement was destroyed through a series of events now called the Kieft’s War. When the Native Americans came to Anne’s settlement, they drug her and five of her children out, killed them, and burned the house down. The story continued to say that Anne’s one daughter, who was out picking berries, might have lived through the raid because of her hair. Anne’s daughter had red hair which was something unusual for the Native American tribe, therefore, she might have been captured and went to go live with them.