Person:Cotton Mather (2)

     
Rev. Cotton Mather
d.13 Feb 1728
m. 6 Mar 1661/62
  1. Rev. Cotton Mather1663 - 1728
  2. Maria Mather1664/65 - 1746
  3. Elizabeth Mather1666/67 - Bef 1745
  4. Nathaniel Mather1669 -
  5. Sarah Mather1671 - 1758
  6. Rev. Samuel Mather1674 - 1733
  7. Abigail Mather1677 - 1748
  8. Hannah Mather1680 - 1706
  9. Catharine Mather1682 - 1683
  10. Jerusha Mather1684 - 1710
m. 4 May 1686
  1. Increase Mather1699 - Bef 1728
  1. Rev. Samuel Mather1706 - 1785
  • HRev. Cotton Mather1663 - 1728
  • WLydia LeeBef 1672 - 1733/34
m. 5 Jul 1715
Facts and Events
Name Rev. Cotton Mather
Gender Male
Birth[2] 12 Feb 1663 Boston, Suffolk Co., MA
Marriage 4 May 1686 to Abigail Phillips
Marriage to Elizabeth Clarke
Marriage 5 Jul 1715 to Lydia Lee
Death[2] 13 Feb 1728
Burial[1] Copp's Hill Cemetery, Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States
Reference Number? Q380719?


the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Cotton Mather (; February 12, 1663 – February 13, 1728) was a New England Puritan clergyman and a prolific writer. Educated at Harvard College, in 1685 he joined his father Increase as minister of the Congregationalist Old North Meeting House of Boston, where he continued to preach for the rest of his life. A major intellectual and public figure in English-speaking colonial America, Cotton Mather helped lead the successful revolt of 1689 against Sir Edmund Andros, the governor imposed on New England by King James II. Mather's subsequent involvement in the Salem witch trials of 1692–1693, which he defended in the book Wonders of the Invisible World (1693), attracted intense controversy in his own day and has negatively affected his historical reputation. As a historian of colonial New England, Mather is noted for his Magnalia Christi Americana (1702).

Personally and intellectually committed to the waning old social and religious orders in New England, Cotton Mather unsuccessfully sought the presidency of Harvard College, an office that had been held by his father Increase, another significant Puritan clergyman and intellectual. After 1702, Cotton Mather clashed with Joseph Dudley, the governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, whom Mather attempted unsuccessfully to drive out of power. Mather championed the new Yale College as an intellectual bulwark of Puritanism in New England. He corresponded extensively with European intellectuals and received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from the University of Glasgow in 1710.

A promoter of the new experimental science in America, Cotton Mather carried out original research on plant hybridization and on the use of inoculation as a means of preventing smallpox contagion. He dispatched many reports on scientific matters to the Royal Society of London, which elected him as a fellow in 1713. Mather's promotion of inoculation against smallpox, which he had learned about from an African man named Onesimus whom Mather held as a slave, caused violent controversy in Boston during the outbreak of 1721. Scientist and US founding father Benjamin Franklin, who as a young Bostonian had opposed the old Puritan order represented by Mather and participated in the anti-inoculation campaign, later described Mather's book Bonifacius, or Essays to Do Good (1710) as a major influence on Franklin's own life.

This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Cotton Mather. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
References
  1. Cotton Mather, in Find A Grave.
  2. 2.0 2.1 Cotton Mather, in Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
  3.   Mather, Cotton, in American National Biography Online.