Cotton Mather by Bianca Mauro (posted 5/10/98)

Related historical timeline created with Timeliner (Nobles grad, Tom Snyder)

(1663-1728)

Cotton Mather was a bright , young , intelligent Harvard Graduate in the late seventeenth century. The son of famed preacher Increase Mather, he saw himself as chosen by God to ensure the salvation of the Puritans, and with this vision he took it upon himself to free Salem Village from the tentacles of Satan. Cotton Mather was an even more prolific writer and speaker than his father, and published many works including the Magnalia Christi Americana . Mather was often seen as more of an "Enlightment" thinker than a strict Calvinist, although he was born and raised to Calvinist beliefs. He worked extensively to increase the understanding of medicine throughout the New England community, and was a leader, along with his father, in the battle to find a vaccine for Small Pox. He also inherited and shared the pulpit of Boston's Old North Church with his father. Cotton Mather remains best known however, for his support of the Witchcraft persecutions in the 1692 Salem Witch Craze.

Bianca Mauro '99, Noble and Greenough School
History Teacher: LE Hartmann
Sources and Related Web Sites:
  1. The Reader's Companion to American History - Foner and Garrety
  2. The Cotton Mather Home Page and Picts : http://www.gty.org/~phil/mather.htm
  3. PICTS + TEXT :http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/courses/lis182/first12.html
  4. The Cotton Mather page :http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/bailey/mather.htm
  5. The Cotton Mather page 2 :http://history.hanover.edu/17th/mather.htm
  6. Message for reform : Cotton Mather: http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0524_Bios-_Cotton_Mather.html
  7. Cotton Mather : http://home.earthlink.net/~jimmyschmd/CMframe.html

Graphics of Cotton Mather