Talk:William Hutchinson (Rhode Island judge)

Unsourced assertions and chronological inconsistency

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"William Hutchinson grew up in Alford where he was the warden of his church in 1620 and 1621. He then became a merchant in the cloth trade and moved to London.[2] Here he renewed a friendship from Alford with Anne Marbury, the daughter of Francis Marbury and Bridget Dryden, and the couple were married on 9 August 1612 at the Church of Saint Mary Woolnoth on Lombard Street in London." This literally asserts that William Hutchinson moved to London in 1621 or afterwards, following which he married Anne Marbury in 1612.

More problematic is the fact that the cited source #2, Joseph Lemuel Chester in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 20:355, Oct 1866, says nothing whatsoever about William Hutchinson having ever (1) been a "merchant in the cloth trade" or (2) having ever "moved to London." To the contrary, it says only that he "was baptized at Alford on the 14th of August, 1586, and evidently resided there until the time of his emigration" and that "in the Parish Register his name occurs as Church Warden in the year 1620-1." Similarly, the cited sources Robert Charles Anderson, John Denison Champlin, and Gary Boyd Roberts say nothing about William Hutchinson having ever resided in London or being a cloth merchant. If there is any basis for either of these assertions, that source should be cited, not a source that patently does not say what the citation claims it says. pnh (talk) 13:41, 20 July 2020 (UTC)Reply