On the three generations that embody the first Anglo American century.
For much of 1633, and again in 1634, London clergyman Richard
Mather was suspended for failing to conform to the Anglican Church’s strict
regulations for preachers. Wearying of that climate of orthodoxy, and
encouraged by colleagues already in the New World (including John Cotton), Mather
and his young family took ship for Massachusetts in June 1635. Once there, Mather became an impassioned advocate
for New World Puritanism in its debates with the European branch, as in his
tract Church
Government and Church Covenant Discussed. Four of his six sons followed
Mather into the ministry, establishing his name as one of the colony’s most
powerful clerical—which is to say also political and social—forces and
legacies.
The youngest of those sons, Increase Mather, certainly
illustrated the potency of that expanding family legacy, not only in his own
ecclesiastical efforts, but also and more tellingly in his multiple other
roles: as a president
of Harvard College, a recipient of the new world’s first honorary
doctorate, an advocate
for reinstating the Massachusetts Charter in opposition to the Dominion of
New England, a son-in-law of John Cotton, and a contemporary
historian of King Philip’s War, among others. If that war indicated one way
in which Richard’s idealized Massachusetts was crumbling by the end of the 17th
century, Increase was also and more centrally connected to a second such
fissure: the
Salem Witch Trials. By that time one of the region’s most prominent and
powerful figures, Increase had the ability to stop the trials if any individual
did; but despite doubts, about
which he did write publicly, he mostly sided with his fellow powerful
ministers and judges.
I’ve written elsewhere about the two sides of Increase’s son Cotton Mather: his own
failure to publicly oppose the Witch Trials, despite even stronger
reservations than Increase’s; and yet his
impressive and influential advocacy for smallpox inoculation. It’s fair to
say, then, that this third-generation Mather minister, named after both of his influential
grandfathers, exemplified both the worst and best of the family’s legacies: the
kinds of hierarchical power structures that could close ranks around the Witch
Trial judges; and yet the kinds of innovative and bold efforts that led the
Puritans to Massachusetts in the first place, and helped create the new world
and nation of which they were such a significant part.
Next family tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Family histories or stories you’d highlight,
American or yours?
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