Who Was Anne Hutchinson?

Not long after we moved to Pelham, my wife and I passed the sign on the Hutchinson River Parkway that informs motorists that the parkway was named for Anne Hutchinson. It also lists the years of her birth (1591) and death (1643).

“Who was Anne Hutchinson?” my wife Ann asked me. As the official historian in the family, I am presumed to have a capacious knowledge of historical arcana, as well as instantaneous recall.

“She was an important female figure in the early colonial period,” I replied in my most authoritative manner.

“You don’t know who she was, do you?” Ann said.

Busted.

Honored by having a river, a parkway and a Pelham school named after her, Anne Hutchinson must have done something to deserve a place in history.

In fact, she was a remarkable character, a leader in the early history of religious freedom in America and one of the first significant women in the British colonies.

To commemorate the 420th anniversary of her birth, a number of celebrations and observances are planned in our area, including an Anne Hutchinson festival on Sunday at the in Pelham Bay Park.

The festival will include a concert by the Bronx Arts Ensemble, a vocal group that will sing 17th century English madrigals in period costume; a demonstration of 17th century herbal medicine; storytelling by a native American about the local Lenape tribe; and period games and crafts for children.

Well, to repeat my wife’s question, who was Anne Hutchinson?

She began her life as Anne Marbury, the daughter of an outspoken English clergyman, from whom she seemed to receive an education far superior to many men and a talent for religious disputation.

At age 21, she married William Hutchinson, with whom she would have 14 children. At a time of great religious ferment in England, the family moved to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634, where there was no separation of church and state.

She soon ran afoul of the civil and religious authorities there because of her charismatic preaching style, which attracted not only other women but also men, a shocking state of affairs at that time. Imagine, a woman preaching to a man. Other than her husband, that is.

A fierce advocate of the Reformation position that individuals have a direct relationship with God without the help of a church hierarchy, she was convicted in the Massachusetts civil court of teachings that were contrary to the accepted tenets of the colony. She was also excommunicated by an ecclesiastical court.

Yet she refused to recant, instead accepting banishment from the colony. Hutchinson moved to Rhode Island, which was well known for its religious tolerance. She felt uneasy even there, and after her husband died in 1642, she received permission from the Dutch to move to New Netherland, in what is now the Bronx.

Sailing up the river that is now named for her, she and seven of her children, plus eight other people, settled near the present-day Co-op City. They apparently built a dwelling near the river, the exact location of which is not known. One leading theory places it at a spot that is now an MTA bus garage north of Co-op City.

The following year, in an apparent act of reprisal resulting from a conflict with the Dutch, a band of Siwanoy Indians killed her and everyone living with her, except for one daughter, whom they kidnapped and raised as their own. According to a generally discredited legend, the girl survived by hiding between the two parts of Split Rock, the large cloven boulder that used to be a local landmark but is now inaccessible, isolated on a patch of land at the intersection of the Hutchinson Parkway and the New England Thruway.

Hutchinson’s older children, who had not moved to New York with her, went on to have families of their own. Through them, many famous Americans can trace their ancestry back to her, including presidents Franklin Roosevelt and George H. W. and George W. Bush.

And that, to answer the question at long last, is who Anne Hutchinson was.