They overcharged her by more than double, she claimed. All she wanted was a fair rate for a remodeling project in her house.

The carpenters refused. The work was done. She owed them money.

Not going to happen, she said. Then she sued them. After she won the lawsuit, the local church began its own investigation into this “restless” and “abrasive” woman (a nasty woman, if you will). In short order, she was excommunicated. But it wasn’t until her husband died years later that the carpenters really had their revenge.

After the carpenters completed work on Ann Hibbins’ Boston house in the late 1630s, they naturally sent her a bill. But Ann found the fee too high and asked her husband William for permission to pursue the matter. The carpenters wouldn’t lower their rate, so Ann took them to court.

Her dogged pursuit of the case — which she ultimately won — concerned the Puritan church, which ruled alongside local government and enforced rigid codes of conduct on community members and especially women. The 1640 transcript from Ann Hibbins’ excommunication hearing does not focus on the carpenters’ wrongdoing. Instead, church officials castigate Ann for transgressing the authority of her husband.

“She stirs in it, as if she were able to manage it better than her husband, which is a plain breach of the rule of Christ,” says one. “That is indeed observed…as a great aggravation of her sin; in so much that some do think she doth but make a wisp of her husband,” says another.

When he took the witness stand, her husband didn’t help matters, saying she should be over the whole mess by now and keep quiet. Women, amirite?

Ann was excommunicated from the church that day.