ABSTRACT
Jane Verin left no journals, letters, or other personal documentation, but she appears in church and court records and in the correspondence of Roger Williams and others. Using a variety of sources, including birth, marriage and death records, church membership rosters, passenger lists, court records, correspondence, town and plantation records, and early histories of the New England colonies, the skeleton of a family sketch begins to emerge. The Verin family hailed from New Sarum, in Wiltshire, England. Records indicate that the family had lived in and around Salisbury for many generations. The Verins were representative of other emigrants who left Wiltshire County in the west of England for the New World. In England and Massachusetts Bay, an unregenerate could go to church, but not receive communion. A woman’s liberty of conscience was a divisive issue in Massachusetts Bay as reflected in the colony’s response to Anne Hutchinson’s leadership of the Antinomians.
