Reverend Richard Mather Homestead, Site of

Born in Lancashire, England in 1596, Richard Mather studied at Brasenose College, Oxford. According to the Historic Liverpool website, “The Puritans built the Ancient Chapel of Toxteth in the 1610s, appointing the 15-year-old Richard Mather as the master of the attached school in 1611, and preacher in 1618.” Mather continued to minister in Toxteth (an inner-city area of Liverpool) for several years, and was twice condemned for non-conformity with the Anglican church’s traditions. In 1635, sailing on the James, the 39-year-old Mather arrived in Boston from Bristol, England in a second wave of Great Migration colonists. He settled in Dorchester, just after the first ministers and members of the congregation had migrated to Windsor, Connecticut.

In August of 1636, when a new church was gathered at Dorchester, Mather was chosen as their teacher. Reverend Mather was one of the most respected Puritan ministers in the colony and his compensation reflected that. In 1652, his yearly wage was raised to £100. According to Ebenezer Clapp in his 1851 work History of the Town of Dorchester, Massachusetts, “This sum was a very liberal compensation for those days, and was continued for a long time.” Mather was one of 30 New England divines who translated psalms for the Bay Psalm Book, thought to be the first book-length publication in the New World. It remained in use for more than 100 years. According to the Dorchester Atheneum, “[Mather] markedly shaped the foundation and development of the New England Way. Arguably, his influence continued beyond his death in 1669, through the leadership of his famous son Increase Mather and that of his even more famous grandson, Cotton Mather.”

Mather and his first wife, Catherine Holt, had six sons, five of whom lived to adulthood, and four of whom became ministers. Their youngest, Reverend Increase Mather, was born in Dorchester in 1639 and led Boston’s North Church from 1661 to his death in 1723, and his son, Reverend Cotton Mather, born in Boston in 1663, ministered there from 1685 until his death in 1728. Both Increase and Cotton played  significant roles in the Salem witch trials.

After Richard Mather’s first wife Catherine died in 1655, he remarried, to Sarah Hankredge, the widow of Reverend John Cotton.

Reverend Mather led the Dorchester congregation until his death in 1669. He is buried in a tomb in Dorchester’s North Burying Ground.

The site of Richard Mather’s home is approximately Edison Green, on Mullin Square. This location is very close to the site of Dorchester’s first meeting house(s).