Increase & Cotton Mather

Salem Witch TrialsBy:Ryan Caprio

Increase Mather: Birth and Death

• Increase Mather was born June 21, 1639 in Dorchester, Massachusetts

• Died August 23, 1723, and was buried in Copps Hill Burial ground, Boston MA

Increase Mather's Childhood/Family Life

• Increase was admitted into Harvard at the age of twelve

• He did not have much of a childhood because he was getting educated most of his life as a minister

• He married in 1662 to Maria Cotton, then married Ann Lake in 1715 a year after his first wifes death

Education

• Was admitted to Harvard at the age of twelve

• Later he went to Trinity college, Dublin

• Got his degree at age nineteen

• Came back to New England and served as a minister of Boston's North Church which became his career

Religious Practice/Career

• He was a puritan

• He was also a minister of the North Church in Boston

• opposed anything that openly contradicted or distracted him from his religious beliefs

• He also became the president of Harvard

Involvement in Salem Witch Trials

• He believed that the witches should not of been accused, He argued that it would be better to let ten witches go free than the blood of a single innocent be shed

• Increase did realize that innocent blood was being shed.

• Although Increase was one of the few ministers to associate sexual activity with witchcraft.

Cotton Mather Birth and Death

• Born February 12, 1663 in Boston Massachusetts

• Died February 13, 1728 in boston MA. buried in Copps Hill Burial ground, Boston MA

Cotton's Childhood and Family life

• He also entered Harvard at twelve like his father, to become a minister

• He became a minister of the same church his father was minister of and he became the minister at age twenty-five and ministered the rest of his life.

Education

• Went to Harvard at age twelve

• Graduated Harvard at age fifteen

• Started to read the bible at a very young age

Religious Practices

• Believed that philosophy and science could work together with religion instead of against it

• He was a puritan minister of the North Church of Boston, like his father Increase Mather

Involvement in Salem Witch Trials

• Mather's most fatal influence over the trials was in composing the answer to the question of whether or not to allow Spectral evidence

• Mather claims he did not attend the trials in Salem

• viewed as one of the most influential Puritan ministers of his day

Work Cited"Increase Mather." Increase Mather. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Oct. 2012. <http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mather/Mather/Increase.shtml>.

"Increase Mather." Salem Witch Trials:. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Oct. 2012. <http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/salem/people/i_mather.html>.