Boston
Will Hutchinson had been very successful in his mercantile business back in Alford, and brought a considerable estate with him to New England. The Hutchinson family arrived in Boston in the late summer of 1634, and purchased a half acre lot on the Shawmut Peninsula, now downtown Boston. Here they had a house built, one of the largest on the peninsula, with a timber frame, a central chimney, glass windows, and at least two stories. The house stood until October 1711, when it was consumed in the great fire of Boston, after which the Old Corner Bookstore was built on the exact location. They soon acquired 600 acres of land at Mount Wollaston, 10 miles (16 km) south of Boston in the area that later became Quincy, and also were granted Taylor's Island in the Boston harbour, where the Hutchinsons grazed their sheep. Once established, William Hutchinson continued to prosper in the cloth trade, made land purchases and investments, and became a town selectman and deputy to the General Court. Anne Hutchinson likewise fit into her new home with ease, and devoted many hours to those who were ill or in need. She became an active midwife and took on the role of spiritual adviser to other women. Magistrate John Winthrop noted that "her ordinary talke was about the things of the Kingdome of God," and "her usuall conversation was in the way of righteousness and kindnesse." Hutchinson particularly tended to those women in childbirth, which was a "grave, protracted, and heavily attended event" among women; as many as 20 percent of women died from it.
Read more about this topic: Anne Hutchinson
Famous quotes containing the word boston:
“Any balance we achieve between adult and parental identities, between children’s and our own needs, works only for a time—because, as one father says, “It’s a new ball game just about every week.” So we are always in the process of learning to be parents.”
—Joan Sheingold Ditzion, Dennie, and Palmer Wolf. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 2 (1978)
“Tonight I appear for the first time before a Boston audience—4,000 critics.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“To get time for civic work, for exercise, for neighborhood projects, reading or meditation, or just plain time to themselves, mothers need to hold out against the fairly recent but surprisingly entrenched myth that “good mothers” are constantly with their children. They will have to speak out at last about the demoralizing effect of spending day after day with small children, no matter how much they love them.”
—Wendy Coppedge Sanford. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, introduction (1978)