Hutchinson and Harvard

  Some Cantabrigians believe that Anne Hutchinson, the religious dissenter who was among the first prominent settlers of Rhode Island, should also be credited with causing the Puritans to found Harvard. The General Court of Massachusetts decreed that there would be a school, then called “the College at New Towne,” in 1636. Anne Hutchinson's trial by the church leaders did not begin until 1637. However, until 1638, the school had no buildings, professors, or courses; it was merely an idea. That year, the year that John Harvard willed his library and half his fortune to the school, the first building was erected. Was Anne Hutchinson responsible for the transformation from idea to reality? The short answer, although some find it surprising, is yes. Of course, as with almost every historical question, the full story is more nuanced than yes or no.

Part 1 of this three-part series looks at who Anne Hutchinson was and what she believed. Part 2 explores her influence on Puritan Boston and Cambridge. Part 3 will examine her relationship to the founding of Harvard.

Hutchinson and Harvard

    One thing that can be learned from the controversy surrounding Anne Hutchinson is that the leadership of 1630's Massachusetts were absolutely determined to remain in power. They led their new religious community with the doctrine that there is only one right way to practice their faith. It is natural, then, that they would want to establish a theology school, where those who were already in power and in the mainstream could mold the next generation of leaders. Puritans had always advocated an educated ministry – they preferred university-educated ministers who had received extensive training in how to interpret the bible, and they complained that the Anglicans did not prioritize such training.¹

    The General Court passed an act in October 1636 declaring that the colony would found a school. At the time, the Court included Hutchinson's followers and her opponents. The Governor was Henry Vane and the Deputy-governor was John Winthrop. William Hutchinson was also a member.² The act stated that 200 pounds would be given to found “a school or college” by the government the next year (1637), and 200 more pounds would be given at a later date, and that the court would decide on the locations and building plans in the following session. The language of the act was vague – “a school or college” did not necessarily mean a university.³

     The General Court did not decide on a location or building plans in the following session, in December of 1636. It had a much more pressing matter on its hands: many people believed that the young colony was not going to survive the religious controversy that had overtaken it. the Anne Hutchinson trial. On December 10, 1636, William Hutchinson, Anne's husband, was discharged from his office as a deputy of the General Court at the request of a number of churches.⁴ Around the same time, John Winthrop and several of the mainstream Puritan ministers had a meeting with Anne Hutchinson, privately examining her and asking her directly what she believed about their religious teachings. The debate that she had with them solidified many ministers' belief that she was an enemy and a heretic, but she continued in her role as a dissenting leader until she was put on trial the following year.

    In the meantime, the political leadership of the colony did quite a bit of shuffling around. For the May 1637 elections, the anti-Hutchinsonians had a slim but real majority, and they ensured that the court be transferred to Cambridge (then Newtowne), where they truly had a majority. The vote happened on the Cambridge Common, and some of the members stood in the area that is now Harvard Yard. John Winthrop was elected Governor, and Thomas Dudley, another anti-Hutchinsonian, became Deputy-governor.⁵ That summer, some of William Hutchinson's family arrived in Massachusetts. As a response, the court passed the Alien Act, stating that newcomers to Massachusetts needed the court's permission to stay longer than three weeks.⁶

    On November 2, 1637, the General Court of Massachusetts met in Newtowne. It discharged several of its lower officials – all strong Hutchinson supporters – on technicalities that were legally not related to the Hutchinson case.⁷ It banished a few more of her supporters. It also swore in a few new members of the Court, recent immigrants, including one John Harvard. The last order of business for the day was picking up where they had left off the previous December, and arraigning Anne Hutchinson.

    In Massachusetts at the time, a woman was not entitled to any legal counsel. Hutchinson was to be her own lawyer. She did not try to convince the court that she was justified in criticizing the ministers or that her criticism was correct. If after three years of her influential religious leadership in the community, she hadn't converted these men to her her beliefs, she would not have been able to do it in her trial. Instead, she focused on the fact that only her actions and not her private views could be a basis for convicting her, her belief that the ministers could not prove their claims, and her claim to a right to host religious discussion in her home.⁸

     Governor Winthrop requested testimony from the ministers Hutchinson was supposed to have maligned, but they were all hesitant, perhaps fearing that she could out-argue them. Six ministers did testify, but of course, they had not been present at those meetings in her home where the bulk of the criticism took place. Although a transcript had been taken of the first time she spoke before the court, the previous year, and the ministers claimed she had maligned them that day, none of them could produce that transcript. ⁹

     When Winthrop asked Hutchinson how she could deny that she had spoken against Puritan ministers, when those ministers had just testified that she had slandered them, she would not relent. Her response seems almost childish in its simplicity, but it was very effective: she told him to prove it.¹⁰ The court was struck by the defiance of this woman telling men to prove their claims, and (perhaps more importantly) of this layperson telling ministers to prove their claims. However, if you consider her demand for what it was, it was quite reasonable by our modern sensibilities. She expected the burden of proof to be on her accusers, not on the accused.

    It is very likely that Hutchinson could not have avoided being convicted. She argued eloquently and with just as much knowledge of the Bible as her adversaries, and yet she did not sway them. Partway through the trial, though, she made a claim that almost certainly worked against her. Pressed to explain how she could know that her reading of scripture on the matter of grace was correct, she swore that God himself had revealed religious wisdom to her on several occasions.¹¹ There are religious traditions that accept the idea of an ordinary person talking with God, but Puritanism was not one of them. To her opponents, and possibly even to her friends, Hutchinson's claim of personal revalation was blasphemous.¹²

    Late in the trial, John Cotton, the very minister that Hutchinson had spent so many of her meetings defending and bolstering, turned on her. He claimed that while he had once sympathized with her, she had gone too far.¹³ It is not clear whether he sincerely felt this way or whether he felt he could no longer stand on the side that he saw was losing, but he famously castigated Hutchinson, “Your opinions frett like a Gangrene and spread like a Leprosie, and will eate out the very Bowells of Religion.” ¹⁴

     While Hutchinson still had supporters, they were dwindling because of banishment or because they saw how powerful the opposition was. As was expected, the General Court got behind Governor Winthrop, who called her revelations “delusion” and who felt that eliminating her as a leader was the only way to protect the colony from corruption and controversy.¹⁵ As it was not technically a religious institution, the court could not convict her of heresy; she was banished from the colony for “being a woman not fit for our society.”¹⁶

     Later in November, the court followed through on its year-old plan to decide on a location for the school, and it passed an order that the college would be at Newtowne. One of the reasons for this choice of location was the local pastor. Thomas Shepard was a strong and charismatic preacher who disagreed with Hutchinson, and he may have been the reason that Cambridge was an anti-Hutchinson stronghold.¹⁷ At its following session, the court chose the group that was to become the school's Board of Overseers. There was heavy overlap with the leadership of the Colony; the Board included both Winthrop and Dudley, and some personal friends of Thomas Shepard. Perhaps most interestingly, the newly anti-Hutchinson John Cotton was on the board as well.¹⁸

    The college opened in late summer of 1638. In September of that year, John Harvard died and left his books and half of his estate to the new school. John Harvard had arrived in Massachusetts in 1637.¹⁹ While no record exists of Harvard's views on the Hutchinson controversy, it is very likely he sided against her. John Harvard lived in Charlestown, and he and his wife were members of the church there. At some point in the year after Harvard arrived in Massachusetts, he began assisting with ministerial work at that church, although he was never ordained.²⁰ The minister of that church was none other than Hutchinson's early nemesis Zechariah Symmes.

     The information in the historical record can't prove that Harvard was founded because of Hutchinson, or even that the form it took was influenced by the controversy surrounding her. The initial idea and act to create a school in Massachusetts did come before Hutchinson's trial. However, many of her biographers and many historians of Harvard support the idea that she was the impetus that got the school going.²¹ She was perhaps the most serious threat to the homogeneous religious community that the Puritan leaders envisioned, and a colony-sponsored school for ministers could help them regain control. The shift in political balance from 1636-1637, which occurred largely in reaction to the Hutchinson controversy, probably also made a difference in the religious character in the new school.

      Hutchinson was certainly not the only Puritan dissident. John Cotton was very influential; in fact, Hutchinson's ideological role was largely as his supporter. However, he was more willing to reconcile with Puritan leaders, which made him less of a threat. John Wheelwright caused quite a stir, and it's possible that his case, or future cases such as his, would have inspired Massachusetts to start a university to prevent future Wheelwrights from taking over.

     Of course, it may also be argued that Harvard was inevitable: a growing settlement in the New World that was invested in its future and valued education was bound to start a university at some point. History has no absolutes. However, based on what did happen, it seems that Anne Hutchinson, who taught religion in her home to a growing crowd of admirers and defended herself in court with scripture and good rhetoric, was vital to the timing and the character of Harvard's founding.

1 LaPlante, Eve. American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans, (New York: HarperCollins, 2004)

22.

2Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Founding of Harvard College, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935) 166.

3Morison 170.

4LaPlante 10.

5Morison 177.

6LaPlante 110.

7LaPlante 132.

8Anne Hutchinson trial transcript. 

9LaPlante 61.

10Anne Hutchinson trial transcript.

11Anne Hutchinson trial transcript.

12LaPlante 119.

13LaPlante 128.

14Quoted in LaPlante 190.

15LaPlante 137.

16Anne Hutchinson trial transcript.

17Morison 182.

18Morison 196.

19Morison 151.

20Morison 218.

21Including LaPlante, Morison, Peter G. Gomes (author of “Anne Hutchinson: brief life of Harvard's midwife,” Harvard Magazine, November-December 2002), and others.

A Very Brief History of Cambridge: 1800-1900, Part 1 -- Cambridge Changes Shape and Size

I would hate to imply that one century had more to it than another century, or that the history of one period is worth telling at a greater level of depth than another. Still, I am dividing the 19^th century into several posts. The story of Cambridge in the 19th century includes a few large concepts, and while they are interrelated, they also deserve detail on their own.

Cambridge Changes Shape and Size

      Cambridge started out sprawling but barely settled. As centers of population emerged in the outlying areas of the village, they began to break off and form their own towns. The areas of Shawnsin and Cambridge Village became Billerica and Newton, respectively, in the seventeenth century, and Cambridge Farms became Lexington at the beginning of the eighteenth.¹ By the nineteenth century, Cambridge's outline roughly resembled what it is today. Yet, the town's population was growing: it went from around 2,000 in 1810 to around 8,000 in 1840.² This speedy growth rate was three times the growth rate of Massachusetts during the same period. At the beginning of the century, if you had told a local that the population would be growing that way in his or her lifetime, he or she would probably have assumed – incorrectly – that Cambridge was finally going to take off as a center of trade, like Boston.

      On January 11, 1805, Congress certified Cambridge as a port of entry, the idea being that trade could be conducted up the Charles River, and not just from the Boston Harbor. The “Cambridgeport” area, as it came to be known, briefly became the focus of economic energy in the town, with speculators buying up land in anticipation of a boom. The area's population began to increase in that decade, and soon there was a schoolhouse, fire society, and church for the residents. However, in 1807 Congress passed a trade embargo, banning trade with foreign countries. The isolationist move was a national controversy, with most of the opposition coming from the trade-oriented North, and its effects were felt strongly in Cambridge. Speculators fled from Cambridgeport as land values plummeted.³

      As more bridges were built for trade with Boston, and as industry began to overtake trade as a leading economic force, the areas of Cambridgeport and East Cambridge raced for development. For the rest of the century, Old Cambridge, Cambridgeport and east Cambridge were distinct sections of town and rivals for importance.⁴ Cambridgeport, after being crushed by the Embargo Act, got an early start on developing industry, beginning with furniture and glass factories in the first few decades of the century.⁵ East Cambridge development was boosted by the construction of the Canal Bridge in 1809, approximately where the Museum of Science is today. Estates and marshland gave way to industry and denser residential settlement. Many new residents of the area commuted to jobs in Boston over the bridge.⁶ In 1816, the Middlesex County Courthouse moved to East Cambridge from Old Cambridge, because Andrew Craigie, a speculator in the decline of his career, donated the land for a new building.⁷

      Many in Old Cambridge felt that their area was the proper center of the city, even though this was becoming less and less true. Central Square, which was more a part of Cambridgeport, was becoming the true commercial downtown.⁸ In 1830, Old Cambridge had a successful movement to enclose the Common, meaning that the roads going through it became pedestrian paths, making the Common more like a public park. Its original purpose had been for grazing animals, but that was less of a public need by that point. In the early 19^th century, people in other areas of the city used the roads that went through the Common for transporting goods.⁹ North of Harvard Square was sparsely settled, but there were very productive clay pits and brickyards in that area,¹⁰ and the Common contained good routes to other towns in Eastern Massachusetts, so most of Cambridge was upset at the old section of the town for the enclosure.¹¹

      The major enterprise of Old Cambridge was Harvard. Students and professors patronized local businesses, and the school itself was a major employer. Where religious leaders and prominent Loyalists had once been the big names in Cambridge, many prominent Harvard personalities rose to fame in the 19^th century. The list includes poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, professor of modern languages, scientist and philosopher Louis Aggasiz, professor of natural history, poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, who did his undergraduate and theological studies at Harvard, and Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, who introduced the smallpox vaccine to the United States and taught at the Harvard Medical school.

     By the early 1840's, many residents of Old Cambridge were so frustrated with the feuding with the other two sections, and felt so different from the rest of the town, that they petitioned to separate. Their proposition failed, and made other Cantabrigians aware of a need for a more efficient local government. Cambridge incorporated as a city in 1846, and so the three areas stayed under one government.¹² However, that same decade was when immigration to the city began to rise. The flood of new national groups and expanding industrial character of Cambridgeport and East Cambridge provided new energy to the neighborhood tension as it continued through the rest of the century, quieter than it had been but still somewhat present.

Coming next at Cambridge Considered: A Very Brief History of Cambridge, 1800-1900, part 2, Industry and Immigration.

1Sutton, S.B. Cambridge Reconsidered: 3 1/2 Centuries on the Charles. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1976), 20.

2Sutton 53.

3Sutton 40.

4Sutton 45.

5Martin, Mary L. and E. Ashley Rooney. Cambridge, Massachusetts Past and Present. (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 2008), 9.

6Rooney 9.

7Sutton 45.

8Rooney 12.

9Sutton 47.

10Rooney 9.

11Sutton 47.

12Sutton 54.

A Very Brief History of Cambridge: 1700-1800

The Early Eighteenth Century

      Cambridge in the early eighteenth century grew slowly, continuing trends established in the 1600s. Until the middle of the century, most of the residents were descendants of Puritan settlers.¹ Most of them were farmers, with some traders and artisans. Voters had not been required to be church members since 1691, which indicates that the government was beginning to depart from its religious roots, but in the first half of the 1700's, there were no major religious controversies and not much religious diversity.² During this period, Cambridge's public schooling system became more organized. Administration of the local grammar school had originally been a duty of the town selectmen, but in 1744, the town appointed a separate school board.³ The largely rural village saw some development in the first ten years of the 1700s and again in the 1750s, with larger, improved courthouses and meetinghouses built in both decades.⁴ Harvard participated in this trend, and some of the oldest Harvard buildings that still stand, were built during this period, starting with Massachusetts Hall in 1720.

Anglicans Arrive

       Beginning in the 1740s, and picking up considerably in the next few decades, there was a small but influential influx of wealthy English settlers. Some of these came directly from England, and others had previously settled on estates in the West Indies.⁵ They were Anglicans, belonging to the Church of England, which made them the de facto rivals of the original settlers. In 1761, they opened Christ Church, and the original building is still standing and still an Episcopal church. The wealthy Anglophiles were concentrated in seven elegant manors, along with their farms and gardens. The families who lived there were closely interconnected through blood, marriage, and social ties. William Brattle, a Brigadier-General in the British army, built one of those manors in 1740, and the street where the Anglicans lived is still called Brattle Street.⁶ However, put off by the Anglicans' religion, ostentatious displays of wealth, extravagant private parties, and perhaps most of all their Loyalist political alignment with the King of England, the locals viewed the street as its own miniature community, an island of Englishness in a New World village. They called the street Tory Row, Church Row, or sometimes, the King's Highway.⁷

Cambridge and the American Revolution

      You've heard of Paul Revere's ride, on April 18, 1775. Revere was in fact one of several riders who alerted the countryside that the British troops were on the move. As a part of the same journey, William Dawes rode out Massachusetts Avenue to alert Concord. The next day, the Battle of Lexington and Concord occurred. It was immediately evident that the war would be very present here in Cambridge. The Committee of Correspondence, a provisional government, confiscated many loyalist properties, especially from “Tory Row,” and many loyalists fled the area, feeling unsafe. Harvard classes were canceled on May 1. Students who didn't join the militia resumed classes that October in Concord; the Harvard campus wasn't used as a school again until June 1776.⁸ More than 20,000 militiamen from around New England camped in Cambridge in April of 1775. They took over Loyalist homes, Christ Church, and Harvard for various military uses, and the Common served as a training ground and a site where soldiers camped out. In fighting the war, Cambridge established the first state arsenal in what is now Arsenal Square, and an important magazine (a location for storing gunpowder) by what is now Magazine Street.⁹

       On July 3, 1775, George Washington formally took command of the Continental Army, as the militia was now called, in the Cambridge Common. The site is now commemorated with an archway on the side facing Mass. Ave. For nine months, in 1775 and 1776, Washington used one of the Tory Row manors as his home and headquarters, even bringing his family to stay with him.¹⁰ That manor had been inhabited by several prominent locals, but its most famous owner, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, had not yet been born.

Cambridge in the Early Republic

       In 1779, Massachusetts held a convention in Cambridge in order to decide upon a new constitution for the state. John Adams presided, and had a big hand in writing the document. This constitution, adopted in 1780, is still in effect, and it is the oldest written governing constitution in the world.¹¹ Modern Cambridge residents would likely be very comfortable with most, but not all, of the original document. It included Enlightenment ideas about equality and natural rights; the first article begins, “All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights.” Seven years later, when the federal Constitution was created, the framers looked to the constitution of Massachusetts as one of their models. The Massachusetts constitution includes several provisions about religion, permitting citizens to worship the way they chose, but also authorizing the government to require and support Protestant churches and schools. In 1781, a Massachusetts court ruled that slavery was not permitted in the state because of Article I, and in 1783 the state supreme court agreed.

       After the war, Cambridge's resources probably looked somewhat spent. The use of so many public and private spaces for military needs took its toll.¹² However, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the city saw improvements that set a good precedent for industrialization in the years to come. In 1793, Cantabrigians created a Fire Society – a formal way of organizing their corps of volunteer firefighters. This was essential to protecting homes and other buildings, as there was not yet a professional fire department.¹³ In the same year, the West Boston Bridge was constructed, connecting Cambridge and Boston in a very convenient location, where the Longfellow Bridge is now.¹⁴ This proved to be a boon for the local economy, allowing an increased flow of trade with the Port of Boston. 
 

1 Martin, Mary L. and E. Ashley Rooney. Cambridge, Massachusetts Past and Present. (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 2008), 7.

2 Seaburg, Alan. Cambridge on the Charles. (Cambridge: Anne Miniver Press, 2001),  18.

3 Seaburg 130.

4 Seaburg 19.

5 Rooney 7.

6 Douglas, Adeline. "Tory Row." Merrill, Estelle, ed. Cambridge Sketches by Cambridge Authors. Cambridge Young Women’s Christian Association. (Boston: The Pinkham Press, 1896),  26.

7 Douglas, 25.

8 Rooney 7.

9 Rooney 7.

10 Rooney 8.

11 Seaburg 22.

12 Rooney 8.

13 Seaburg 65.

14 Rooney 9.