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Famous Trials: The Trials of Mary Dyer (1659 & 1660)

Curated by ACT

Mary Dyer was on a spiritual quest to Boston, to Portsmouth, to Newport, and to the northwest coast of England, where she became an ardent member of a new religion - a Quaker, or a member of the Society of Friends. Determined to spread the good news, Mary returned to America as a Quaker missionary. Mary's missionary zeal would ultimately take her to the gallows in Puritan Boston and make her the first and only woman to be executed in America because of her religious beliefs: Mary Dyer, "the Quaker Martyr." Dyer's story reveals much about the intolerance of colonial America in the mid-1600s. But Mary's martyrdom also contributed to the birth of religious freedom in America.

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