Portal:Rhode Island/Selected article/22

Anne Hutchinson, born Anne Marbury (1591–1643), was a Puritan woman, spiritual adviser, mother of 15, and important participant in the Antinomian Controversy that shook the infant Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638. Her strong religious convictions were at odds with the established Puritan clergy in the Boston area, and her popularity and charisma helped create a theological schism that threatened to destroy the Puritans' religious experiment in New England. She was eventually tried and convicted, then banished from the colony with many of her supporters. She and many of her supporters had encouragement from Providence founder Roger Williams and established the settlement of Portsmouth in what became the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. After her husband's death, she moved to New Netherland near an ancient landmark called Split Rock in what later became The Bronx in New York City. Here all but one of the 16 members of her household were massacred by Siwanoy Indians, the only survivor being her nine-year old daughter Susanna, who was taken captive. Her well-publicized trials and the accusations against her make Hutchinson the most famous—or infamous—English woman in colonial American history.