William Hutchinson grew up in Alford. He then became a merchant in the cloth trade and moved to London. 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. The couple moved back to Alford where they began following preacher John Cotton in the nearby port of Boston, Lincolnshire. The couple had 14 children in England, one of whom died in infancy, and two of whom died from the plague. Cotton was compelled to emigrate in 1633, and the Hutchinsons followed a year later with their 11 children and soon became well established in the growing settlement of Boston in New England.