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:
“If nobody knows you that does not argue that you be unknown, nobody knew Ida when they no longer lived in Boston but that did not mean that she was unknown.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“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)