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Note: John Sanford, the emigrant ancestor of this line, came to Boston on the Ship Lyon in Nov. 1631. Jack Sanford in his book "President John Sanford of Boston, Massachusetts and Portsmouth, Rhode Island 1605 � 1965" states that John, who stayed behind after the sailing of the Winthrop fleet, was an employee of the Winthrop household between 1629 and 1631, "often acting as a purchasing agent for John Winthrop." Shortly after his arrival he became a member of the First Church of Boston and was made Freeman 3 April 1632. Between 1632 and 1637, he was a respected and active citizen of Boston, serving as cannoneer of the Fort at Boston, surveyor of ordance and other ammunition, on committees regulating cattle, and various committees charged with the laying out bounds for Roxbury, Newtown and private holdings. He was in charge of fencing in 1635 and a Selectman of Boston in 1636 and 1637.
His life changed when "on 20 Nov. 1637 he was ordered disarmed as an adherent of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, and relieved of all his duties in and around Boston" [Sanford p. x]. Anne (Marbury) Hutchinson, mother of John's second wife Bridget, "preached that one could achieve salvation through a direct intuition from God" [Elizabeth Rau, Providence Journal-Bulletin, 2/28/96]. "Puritan leaders argued salvation could be achieved only by obeying the laws of the church and government. To Hutchinson, the church's view was a corruption of the true spirit of the Puritan movement and would produce a colony of hypocrites, pious only on the outside, according to historian William McLoughlin, in his essay, 'Anne Hutchinson Reconsidered.'
But Puritan leaders feared that her beliefs would undermine the church organization and erode the rigid social order. They labeled her group the Antinominians, or the lawless ones. In 1637, she was arrested and tried for sedition. Most scholars agree the trial was a travesty.
'I doe cast you out and in the name of Christ I doe deliver you up to Sathan . . .' said John Wilson, a Puritan elder, after her conviction. He ordered her 'as a leper' to leave the congregation.
'The Lord judgeth not as man judgeth,' she replied. 'Better to be cast out of the church than to deny Christ.'
The following year she was thrown out of the Bay Colony" John and his family went as well, heading for Providence about the middle of March 1638.
In 1638, he was one of the signers of the Portsmouth Agreement.
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