Note: Presenting via Zoom as part of the Smithsonian Associates program.

Anne Hutchinson can be regarded as the founding mother of religious freedom in America, says historian and author Fred Zilian. In the 1630s, her outspoken theological views brought her into conflict with the Puritan leadership of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Tried for sedition and heresy in 1637–38, she was excommunicated from the church and banished from the colony—an extraordinary punishment for a woman in early New England. Zilian traces Hutchinson’s life and legacy, beginning with her early years in England, her marriage, and her journey to New England. The lecture explores the religious meetings that led to her prosecution, the dramatic civil and church trials that sealed her fate, and her banishment and settlement on Aquidneck Island in Rhode Island. Zilian then turns to her later years in New Amsterdam and her enduring legacy as a powerful voice for conscience, dissent, and religious liberty in early America.