Mary Williams and Anne Hutchinson both made significant contributions to Rhode Island history. Hutchinson in helping to found Portsmouth after her dramatic banishment from Massachusetts Bay and Williams in confirming a vital land evidence for Providence. What is lesser known about these two Rhode Island women is that they grew up in neighboring counties in England – Williams in Nottinghamshire and Hutchinson in Lincolnshire. This talk will explore the early lives of Anne Marbury and Mary Bernard before they crossed the Atlantic and became Anne Hutchinson and Mary Williams.
Charlotte Carrington-Farmer (Ph.D. University of Cambridge) is an Associate Professor of History at Roger Williams University. Carrington-Farmer specializes in Rhode Island history and has a forthcoming article on Mary Williams, entitled: “More Than Roger’s Wife: Mary Williams and the Founding of Providence” New England Quarterly (2024), and a forthcoming book, Roger Williams and His World (Broadview, 2024). She has published two biographies in edited collections, one on Thomas Morton in Atlantic Lives: Biographies that Cross the Ocean (Brill, 2014) and another “Roger Williams and the Architecture of Religious Liberty” in Law and Religion in the Liberal State (Hart, 2020.) Her interest in Rhode Island history also includes equine history, and she published an article on “The Rise and Fall of the Narragansett Pacer,” in Rhode Island History (2018) and a chapter “Trading Horses in the Eighteenth Century: Rhode Island and the Atlantic World,” in Equestrian Cultures: Horses, Human Society, and the Discourse of Modernity (University of Chicago Press, 2019.) She routinely teaches “The Trial of Anne Hutchinson” using the experiential pedagogy “Reacting to the Past” and has also led two study abroad trips to “Retrace Roger Williams in England.” She grew up in Derbyshire, England – close to the childhood homes of both Mary and Anne.
Attendance is free, but registration is required. Guests can register here.