Increase Mather Home(s), Sites of

Increase Mather was born in Dorchester, MA in 1639, the youngest of six sons born to Rev. Richard Mather. Increase entered Harvard when he was 12 years old, graduated at 17, and returned to England, his father’s homeland, for further study. He ministered there until returning to Massachusetts in 1661. Once in Boston, he began to preach at the North Church Meeting House (also known as the Second Church), directly across North Square from where he and his family lived.

A major fire in 1676 destroyed the Mather home, the meeting house, and 45 other North End buildings.  While a new meeting house was soon rebuilt on the same site, Increase built a new home for his family on Hanover Street, approximately at the corner of North Bennett Street. Interestingly, the site of the Mather home in North Square is today the site of the Paul Revere House, built circa 1680, making it the oldest surviving house in downtown Boston.

Rev. Increase Mather’s time at North Church spanned more than 60 years, from 1661 until his death in 1723. He was also the president of Harvard College from 1685 to 1701.

Increase Mather had a somewhat moderating influence on the Salem witch trials. It was Increase who argued the colony’s case in England to replace the original charter revoked in 1684. He returned to Massachusetts in May of 1692 with both a new charter and a new governor, William Phips, only to discover the jails were filled with accused witches. In August of 1692, he met with several other ministers in Cambridge, which resulted in The Return of Several Ministers and marked the point when support for the methods of the trials began to be questioned by eminent men of the colony. He urged caution in the use of spectral evidence to convict accused witches. And yet, when he attended the trial of Rev. George Burroughs, and heard the spectral evidence, he stated that he, too, would have convicted the minister.  Increase influenced the decision to bring the whole ordeal to an end with his paper Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits Personating Men, with the comment, “It were better that ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one Innocent Person should be Condemned.”

19 North Square is the site of the Paul Revere House today; 342 Hanover Street (at North Bennett Street) is the approximate location of the second Increase Mather home