The sentence of banishment was carried out in March of 1638. To the sorrow of many of the colonists, William Hutchinson went with his wife. He refused their invitations to remain, saying, “For I am more dearly tied to my wife than to the church.... And I do think her a saint and servant of God.” With husband and children and seventy friends Mistress Anne went to Rhode Island where Roger Williams offered the party a friendly refuge. From the Indians they bought an island, for ten coats, twenty hoes, and forty fathoms of white wampum; and lived there until 1642 when William Hutchinson died. Hearing a rumor that Massachusetts was trying to extend her control over Rhode Island, the settlers left for a new site in the Dutch colony to the west. A year later a friendly Indian one morning visited Anne Hutchinson’s house. Seeing that the family was defenseless he returned that night with others of his tribe, killed the sixteen members of the household and set fire to the buildings. When Governor Winthrop heard of this massacre he declared that “the bare arm of God displayed itself in her death.” Ministers in Massachusetts announced it a divine judgment supporting their verdict. One of them wrote, “God’s hand is more apparently seen herein to pick out this woful woman to make her and those belonging to her an unheard-of heavy example above others.” But Mistress Anne’s friends charged the guilt of her murder upon the colony and declared it was the judgment of the Lord on Massachusetts. An able woman, clever, brilliant, possibly indiscreet in her criticism of the ministers, Anne Hutchinson’s life was a strange mixture of consecration and conflict, of kindliness and contention, with a tragic end. She was fighting the first battle in a long series to be fought out in America--for religious toleration and for freedom of thought and speech, for liberty of conscience, for a true democracy in religion. CHAPTER III BETSY ROSS 1752-1836 In 1752 the eighth child was born in the Quaker family of Griscom in Philadelphia, and was named Elizabeth. Nine other children came after her, so with a total of sixteen brothers and sisters you may be sure she never had much opportunity to be lonely. Perhaps the large number of children is the explanation for her being apprenticed at Webster’s, the leading upholstery establishment in the city. There Elizabeth became acquainted with John Ross, one of her fellow-apprentices; their friendship grew to love, and when she was twenty-one they were married. Now John Ross was the son of an Episcopal clergyman and because of that fact Elizabeth was “disowned” by the Friends for her marriage.