I’d like to think of her as the mother of tolerance.””

Valerie Dubrule, The Friends of Anne Hutchinson

PORTSMOUTH — Dozens of direct descendants of Anne Hutchinson gathered at Founders’ Brook Park, the library and then Greenvale Vineyards Friday to toast the Puritan preacher, midwife and herbalist on the occasion of her 425th birthday.

Portsmouth was the middle stop of a three-state tour put together by the Boston-based Anne Marbury Hutchinson Foundation. The Foundation’s “Founding Mothers Celebration” started tracing the Puritan outcast and feminist icon’s path from Boston earlier this week before stopping in Portsmouth.

On Saturday it will head to Bronx-Eastchester, N.Y. — where Hutchinson and six of her children were massacred by Siwanoy Indians in 1642 — before heading back to Boston for closing events on Sunday.

The president of the Foundation, Eric Nielsen, is a Californian whose family is originally from Boston. He’s also a descendent of Hutchinson, with whom he became fascinated due to the influence of his mother, an amateur genealogist for 30 years. The idea for the large-scale celebration came to him literally in a dream, he said.

“I was in a dream with Anne, who was dressed up in period garb,” Mr. Nielsen. “She turned to me and said, ‘Son, finish the job.’ Then I woke up.”

The goal of the Foundation, Mr. Nielsen said, is to support independent women who, like Anne Hutchinson, “aren’t quiet when they have a great idea.”

“This whole day is a celebration of strong women who can be honored for producing and creating ideas and projects that are not only worthwhile but are awe-inspiring to younger women to emulate,” he said.

The Foundation was assisted at the local end by Valerie Dubrule of The Friends of Anne Hutchinson, who years ago pushed to get a sign bearing Anne Hutchinson’s name at Founders’ Brook after being surprised to find a lack of monuments or markers memorializing her in Portsmouth.

“In 1995 we realized there was nothing to commemorate Anne Hutchinson on this island,” said Ms. Dubrule, noting that the male founders are listed on the big stone in the center of Founders’ Brook, but none of the women.

Indeed, Anne Hutchinson’s name isn’t on the Portsmouth Compact. Being a woman in 1638, she wouldn’t have been allowed to sign the document, which took place after her conviction of heresy, banishment from Massachusetts Bay Colony and excommunication from the church. 

Ms. Dubrule and Michael Ford — a descendent of both Hutchinson and Mary Dyer, hanged in Boston in 1660 for defying Puritan law that banned Quakers from the colony — tried to rectify the situation by establishing an “Anne Hutchinson/Mary Dyer Memorial Herb Garden” at the park. Both women were herbalists, as is Mr. Ford, who made a plea for volunteers to water the garden as he lives an hour away.

Ms. Dubrule said Hutchinson wasn’t only a “founding mother” of Portsmouth, but a founding mother of the Founding Fathers.

“I’d like to think they learned a lot from this first group of settlers,” she said. “We work best under tolerance. I think that’s the hallmark of Rhode Island. I’d like to think of her as the mother of tolerance.”

Town historian speaks

Also lending its support to the affair Friday was the Portsmouth Historical Society, whose president, Jim Garman, lectured on the 1638 settlement at the Portsmouth Free Public Library shortly after the Founders’ Brook gathering.

Mr. Garman said when it comes to Portsmouth’s history, Hutchinson was one of three important early settlers. The other two were William Coddington and The Rev. Dr. John Clarke, both of whom signed the Compact.

Coddington, who was the political leader of the colony that was founded here, died as governor of Rhode Island in 1678. Clarke was a leading advocate of religious freedom in America. Both men broke with the Hutchinson followers and, after a divisive town meeting, went off to found Newport in 1639.

”They closed up the book and left. The Portsmouth record of those early town records are in the Newport archives,” said Mr. Garman.

Hutchinson didn’t live in Portsmouth for very long. After the death of her husband and Compact signer William Hutchinson in 1641, she decided to move on.

“She still feared the absorption of Massachusetts and the governors there,” said Mr. Garman, noting that Tiverton and Little Compton — just a short distance away — were still part of Massachusetts at the time.

Hutchinson took her children and settled in an area we now know as the Bronx, where they later met their fate. Her place in history, however, is significant, said Mr. Garman. 

“Her testimony in her trials is very noteworthy and important to American history,” he said. “It’s really unfortunate that the role of women was really diminished. They didn’t have a whole lot of rights, and for a lot of us like me, who grew up in the ’40s and ’50s, they didn’t have a whole lot of rights then, either.

“Anne was a woman beyond her time and we’re really proud to celebrate her 425th birthday and her being a founding mother of the Town of Portsmouth.”

After Mr. Garman’s speech, the group moved to Greenvale Vineyards for a wine-tasting with vineyard owner and Anne Hutchinson descendent, Nancy Parker Wilson.