annestatue

July 17, 1591                Anne Marbury is born in Alford, Lincolnshire, England

1605                             Anne and her family move to London, where her father serves as a minister.

1611                             Anne’s father, Francis Marbury, dies.

1612                             Anne marries Will Hutchinson. The couple moves back to Alford.

1625                             Prince Charles ascends to the throne in 1625 and England begins to shift back toward Rome and away from Calvinism and Puritanism.

April 1630                    The Massachusetts Bay Company, led by John Winthrop, boards a fleet of ships and sails for America.

1631                             Two hundred settlers die of cold, illness, or starvation during the first winter in Massachusetts. When the first supply ship arrives in February, 80 settlers take the return trip back to England.  

Fall 1634                       Anne and Will Hutchinson, and eleven of their children, arrive in Boston harbor in September. Six weeks later, Anne is accepted for membership in the Boston church.

1635                             Anne begins holding women’s religious study groups in private homes. She quickly develops a reputation as an astute interpreter of the Bible and adds a second weekly session to accommodate all.

1636                             Anne, upset with a sermon being delivered by John Wilson, walks out of the meetinghouse.

1636                             Anne suggests in her meetings that various ministers are not clearly enough preaching that salvation is a matter of grace, and not dependent upon works.

1636                             Anne has substantial political support from Henry Vane, who attends her meetings and is elected governor of Massachusetts.

December 1636            Anne is called to a meeting where she faces a panel of seven ministers who question her about her views on the Scripture and on their own preaching.

March 1637                   Ministers meeting in Cambridge for a Synod identify 82 errors held by Anne that had been recorded in their meeting with her. They ban her from leading religious discussion groups.

May 17, 1637                A meeting of magistrates and freemen in Cambridge Common decides control the colony. Supporters of John Winthrop and his orthodox theology carry the day. Winthrop is elected Governor for a second time,

November 7, 1637        The trial of Anne Hutchinson begins before the Great and General Court of Massachusetts in a meetinghouse in Cambridge (Newtown).

November 8, 1637        Anne is convicted of heresy and sedition and sentenced to banishment from the colony.

November 15, 1637      The General Court votes to erect a new college in Cambridge, which will become Harvard.

March 1638                  Before she leaves Massachusetts, Anne faces a church trial before the congregation of the Church of Boston. Anne is examined and excommunicated.

April 1, 1638                Anne begins a six-day walk south to John Williams’s Providence Plantation, where she boards a ship takes took her to the island of Aquidneck, in present-day Rhode Island.

1642                            Anne’s husband Will, the first governor of Rhode Island, dies and Anne her younger children move to New Amsterdam, which will later become the colony of New York.

July 1643                     Anne and six of her children are killed when Siwanoy Indians rampage the Dutch settlement where she lives.

1987                            Governor Michael Dukakis formally pardons Anne Hutchinson.


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