Cotton Mather Home, Site(s) of

Cotton Mather was born in Boston in 1663, the eldest son of Reverend Increase Mather. A brilliant and devout young man, Cotton met the requirements to attend Harvard College by the age of 11, the youngest person ever to be admitted to the illustrious institution. He received his first degree at 15, and his master’s by 18. Two years earlier he had been accepted into the North Church in Boston, a congregation led by his father, Increase, for 60 years. Cotton’s own vocation as a minister began early – he preached his first sermons in Dorchester in 1680, and five years later was ordained as the junior minister at the North Church. He remained there for 40 years.

In popular culture, Rev. Cotton Mather is best remembered for his involvement in the Salem witch trials, although there is disagreement about just how much he had to do with the terrible events. On the one hand, he warned against using spectral evidence to convict the accused and did not attend the trials. On the other hand, he advised the magistrates to move with speed and was known to attend the August 19 hanging. A prolific writer, Rev. Mather also documented the case of Goody Glover, accused and executed for witchcraft in 1688. Many suggest the details of this case influenced the looming tragedy in Essex County. He wrote of two other witchcraft cases – those of Mercy Short and Margaret Rule. Most famously, he wrote The Wonders of the Invisible World, a court-sanctioned account of the witchcraft trials. Mather was publicly refuted by Robert Calef’s sensational, possibly exaggerated More Wonders of the Invisible World. Said historian Samuel Eliot Morison, “Robert Calef, who had it in for Cotton Mather, tied a tin can to him after the frenzy was over and it has rattled and banged through the pages of superficial and popular histories.” Mather’s reputation never fully recovered.

Nevertheless, when he died in 1728 at the age of 65, Cotton Mather was a respected minister, scholar, and public servant. After the trials were over, he had continued to preach, write, and work. He helped the needy and impoverished, supported education of women, the enslaved, and Indigenous people, supported scientific efforts to develop vaccines against smallpox, and worked to unify different Christian faiths.

Cotton Mather first lived with his family in a house at 19 North Square (the site of the Paul Revere House today). When that burned in 1676, the Increase Mather family moved to a house on Hanover Street (342 Hanover, the building was demolished in 1908), and finally lived just a block or so away from there, on Hanover south of Prince Street. Today, Mike’s Pastry, at 300 Hanover Street, is the approximate location.