Cotton Mather ( 1663 - 1728 )

Birth: 12 February 1663 Death: 13 February 1728 Burial: Copp's Hill Cemetery, Boston, Massachussetts, United States, North and Central America Profession: Clergyman, Congregational; slave owner Education: Boston Latin School; Harvard, BA (1678), MA (1681) Career: Assistant to his father at the Second Church in Boston (1680); ordained there (1685); remained there for the rest of his life; Overseer at Harvard; one of the ringleaders of the rebellion against Sir Edmund Andros, the Governor of Massachusetts (1688); Fellow of Harvard (1690-1703); his investigations into witchcraft led him to be associated with the Salem Trials, although he later condemned them as unjust; instrumental in securing Elihu Yale's benefaction to the Connecticut College later named after him; when smallpox broke out in Boston, he persuaded Zabdiel Boylston (FRS 1726) to use inoculation after testing the procedure on Boylston's youngest son and two enslaved people; Mather's attention was first drawn to innoculation by an account from Onesimus, an enslaved man in his service, who had been innoculated as a child in Africa; conducted one of the first recorded experiments with plant hybridization based on his observations of corn varieties, described in a letter to James Pettiver (FRS 1695) in 1716; author of more than 450 books and pamphlets on Puritan theology and morals.