Produced as part of a recognition of Women’s History Month, this short video program explores the life and times of Anne Hutchinson, the bold Puritan religious pioneer, who lived her final 16 months about a mile from St. Paul’s Church in New York in the 1640s. Click here for a seven-minute video produced on March 15, 2024 by the St. Paul’s Church National Historic Site.

Anne Hutchinson [née Marbury; July 1591 – August 1643] was a Puritan spiritual advisor, religious reformer, and an important participant in the Antinomian Controversy which shook the infant Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638. Rev. John Cotton supported her, but Archbishop Laud led the movement to silence her.

Her strong religious convictions were at odds with the established Puritan clergy in the Boston area and her popularity and charisma helped to create a theological schism that threatened the Puritan religious community in New England. She was eventually tried and convicted, then banished from the colony with many of her supporters. She settled in Rhode Island at what is now Founders’ Brook in Portsmouth.

After her husband’s death, threats of Massachusetts annexing Rhode Island compelled Hutchinson to move into the lands of the Dutch in what later became The Bronx in New York City. Tensions were high at the time with the Siwanoy Indian tribe. In August 1643, Hutchinson, six of her children, and other household members were killed by Siwanoys during Kieft’s War in New York.