A few years ago I read Sarah Vowell's excellent book 'The Wordy Shipmates', which is about the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. One of the people who shows up fairly late in the book is Anne Hutchinson, a woman who was put on trial for having bible studies at her house and for generally being a troublemaker; she then went on to found Portsmouth, Rhode Island (which is a whole amazing story in its own right -- check out a biography of her, or even just her Wikipedia page, for more about her interesting and inspiring life).

On reading the story of her trial, I thought to myself, "Someone should write a heroic folk song about this."

Then a year passed, and I thought, "OK, maybe the person who should write a heroic folk song about this is me."

It was a tricky endeavor -- I was trying to write an engaging song that essentially centered itself around an obscure theological argument from 350 years ago. Also, while I allowed myself some poetic license, I also wanted to give a flavor of the sorts of arguments that were being used. (If you look at the trial transcript you should be able to find the ones I was referring to pretty easily.)

Once I got the idea of using 'The Ballad of John Henry' as a model the whole thing came into focus and the song came together very quickly, with occasional pauses to check Vowell's book and a transcript of the trial to get things straight.

I should note that, although he is too polite to say so, I think my brother-in-law, an American historian, may not agree with my interpretation of the events of the trial.

I encourage songwriters out there to write other songs about Anne Hutchinson's life. There's certainly plenty of material there!