Author Eve LaPlante tells the true story of the colonial leader and founding mother Anne Hutchinson. A midwife and mother of sixteen faced charges of heresy before forty male judges in colonial Massachusetts where women had no political power. Her progressive ideas garnered a following but ultimately led to her banishment for defying societal norms. After exile she founded a colony in Rhode Island, becoming a pivotal figure in developing concepts like religious freedom and equal rights, showcasing her remarkable achievements. Click here for a 50-minute video of her presentation held at the historic Friends Meeting House in Portsmouth, RI on March 14, 2026.

(Above, left) Niel DeMarino, Board Member of the Brigade of the American Revolution that sponsored the event, introduces LaPlante, whose book, American Jezebel, delves into Hutchinson’s early life in Elizabethan England and her dramatic expulsion.

LaPlante begins by describing Hutchinson’s childhood home near St. Wilfrid’s Church in Alford England, where her father preached, and St. Botolph’s Church in Boston, Lanconshire, where LaPlante learned more about Rev. John Cotton, who heavily influenced Hutchinson’s thinking

LaPlante finished by describing a trip she took with her children by kayak to the island in the Great Cove of Northern Portsmouth, RI, to see the location of Hutchinson’s home in 1638. Hutchinson’s final move was to the Bronx in New York where she and six of her children were slain in a war between the Dutch and Lanape Natives near today’s Hutchinson River Parkway where the Split Rock hiding place of one of her children can be seen today.