Transcript

Introduction: Hub History and Cotton Mather

Music

Jake:
[0:05] Welcome to Hub History where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston. The Hub of the Universe.
This is episode 296 Cotton Mather and the women he loved. Hi, I’m Jake.
This week, I’m pleased to be able to share a recent talk from the congregational library that’s titled Cotton Mather and the women he loved.

[0:32] Cotton Mather has a larger than life presence both in Boston history and in past episodes of this podcast, we’ve heard Cotton Mather’s sermons on the spiritual dangers of celebrating Christmas on witchcraft and on executing pirates.
We’ve heard how he helped promote smallpox inoculation using traditional African methods and how he became a victim of 18th century cancel culture after witnessing the first aurora borealis in living memory.
What we haven’t heard much about in past episodes is Cotton Mather, the man and the husband as part of the congregational library and archives.
Valentine’s day celebration. Helen Gelinas gave a talk about Cotton Mather and the women.
He was closest to his three wives, his daughters and his sisters, as well as his lifelong mission to understand the biblical eve.
The prototype for all women, at least in his universe.
Helen examined who he was behind closed doors as a husband and father.
And she challenged us to reconsider our assumptions that Cotton Mather would have been a tyrant over his wife and a strong disciplinarian who ruled his Children with the Rod.
She also shared the surprising insight that between wives, Cotton Mather was one of Boston’s most eligible widowers, somebody who was aggressively pursued by suitors.

Support from Listeners

 

[1:58] But before we talk about Cotton Mather and his women, I just wanna pause to say thank you to everyone who supports Hub history on Patreon.
I love having the opportunity to share talks from smart people like Helen Gelinas and to learn things about Boston history that I never knew before.
I’d never have the opportunity to do stuff like this without the podcast and I wouldn’t be able to make the podcast without a little help from my sponsors.
These are the loyal listeners who support the show with $2.05 dollars or even as much as $20 each month to offset the expenses that go into making hub history.
Knowing I can rely on them means that I can invest in web hosting and security podcast media, hosting A I tools and the audio processing that makes me sound so doggone good, if you’re already supporting the show. Thank you.
If you’re not yet supporting the show and you’d like to start, it’s easy.
Just go to patreon.com/hubor or visit hubor.com and click on the support us link.
And thanks again to all our new and returning sponsors.

The Hidden Histories Project

 

[3:14] Now it’s time for this week’s main topic. This talk on Cotton Mather and the women he loved was presented as part of the Hidden Histories Project because early New England was largely organized by and around the Puritan church.
Church records are some of the most important historic resources for those who study the region in the 17th and early 18th centuries.
Those early records are archived and stewarded by the congregational library and archives on Beacon Street almost across from the statehouse and just a few doors down from the Boston Athenaeum.
The library welcomes researchers by appointment and can offer tours to individuals and groups also by appointment.
They also welcomed the public for special events like an upcoming workshop for anyone interested in their family’s early New England roots called Exploring Family history at the congregational library and archives.

[4:11] On Friday March 29th from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Dr Tricia Pion and archivist, Billy mccarthy will host anyone whose family arrived in New England from 1620 to 1850 show them how to use the library’s New England’s hidden Histories, digital archive, and other resources from the CL A to research family histories and fill in context for understanding the lives of people in the past.
Reservations are required and attendees are encouraged to email specific research topics to the organizers in advance.
I’ll include all the details for the event in this week’s show notes.

[4:49] New England’s Hidden Histories is one of the congregational libraries most important projects because church records are generally held by individual churches.
They’re difficult to preserve and hard for researchers to access through the Hidden Histories Project.
These critical early records are digitized and transcribed while the originals are left in the possession of local churches.

[5:13] The annual Cotton Mather lecture which we’re about to hear is part of this New England Hidden Histories Project and it’s held in February to coincide with the anniversary of Cotton Mather’s birth on February 12th, 1663 and his death on February 13th, 1728, presenter, Helen Cage Gelinas is the Director of Transcription for New England’s Hidden Histories.
She holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Hart School in Connecticut and A B A in English and an ma in American studies from the University of Tubingen, Germany in Tubingen.
She was selected by the Mather project to be a research and editorial assistant for Volume Five of Cotton Mather’s Biblica Americana, following the presentation and publication of her essay, Regaining Paradise Cotton Mather’s Biblica Americana and the daughters of Eve.
She earned a research fellowship to the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale Divinity School.
She’s currently a phd candidate in Early American Studies at the University of Heidelberg, completing her dissertation entitled The Spirit and The Bride Female Parody Prophecy and the Power of the Pen in the Works of Cotton Mather.
I now hand the microphone over to Helen Gelinas in the congregational library.

Helen Gelinas:
[6:34] Welcome to this annual Cotton Mather lecture. Because this year the uh lecture falls on Valentine’s Day.
It just seemed appropriate to take a look at the domestic life of Doctor Mather.
Therefore, we will take a short excursion through his three marriages and mention some of his Children along the way.
I will also intersperse a few examples of matters, intellectual and theological processes and developments in refining his understanding of eve in the Bible and of how women should or should not be perceived in relation to Genesis three and two, the first woman, on February 12th, which as you know was his birthday in 1686 Cotton Mather paid his first visit as a suitor to young Abigail Phillips as it was his 23rd birthday.
He records the significance of the event in his diary, quote this day through the good hand of God upon me, I finished the 23rd year of my life.
And this day I gave one of my first visits unto a young gentlewoman, the daughter of worthy pious, incredible parents in Charlestown, unto an acquaintance with whom the wonderful providence of God in answer to many prayers directed me.

[7:54] The couple married three months later on May 4th 1686 Abigail was one month shy of her 16th birthday later in describing their wedding day.
Mother records in his diary quote on the morning of my wedding day, the Lord filled my soul and my heart was particularly melted in tears upon my further assurances that in my married estate, he had reserves of rich and great blessings for me.

[8:24] Disappointingly, Mather does not mention or describe his bride in his entry.
He ever after refers to her in his diaries. Though as my dear consort, the couple was extremely happy together in describing their normal home life.
Cotton Mather writes that they established a pattern of evening prayers followed by communal reading or private study.
They then met together for singing a verse or two of psalms and usually ended their day repeating the last verse of Psalm four, which was a particular favorite of matters.
So you can tell that he was very happy in his domestic situation.
A little more than a year later on August 22nd, 1687 they joyfully welcomed their first child.
A beautiful baby daughter named for her mother Abigail.
But only five months later, the baby of whom they were so enamored, died of an attack of convulsion.
This would be the first of many losses. The couple would suffer of the nine Children.
Abigail B five died in infancy or in early childhood.

[9:38] This is the cover page of the sermon that Mather preached for the for his first child.
Incredibly young, 25 year old Mather wrote and preached his daughter’s funeral sermon and delivered it to the congregation the same afternoon that the baby died.
This is hard to understand how anyone could do it. He called it right thoughts and sad hours.
His bereaved wife was not yet 18 years old.
He ached for his own and for her deep pain. Some critics who have read this sermon say that it is one of the most thorough and helpful uh sermons ever written for the management of grief.
Even today, people look to this sermon, one good example of how mother valued women was his desire to correct church discourse regarding the female sex.

[10:32] While not trespassing across the boundaries of orthodoxy.
He was determined to remain totally true to the Bible, but he felt that there was a little bit of clean up to do with the way some of the writers had portrayed women, not in the Bible but on their own.
One finds numerous examples of this throughout his 1692 work for women called Ornaments. For the daughters of Zion.
But for the sake of time, we will examine only one today.

[11:00] This is an excerpt taken from the text on the apparel of women written by Tertullian.
In the third century. I will read it for you.
And do you not know that you are each and eve the sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age.
The guilt must of necessity live too.
You are the devil’s gateway.
You are the unsealing of that forbidden tree. You are the first deserter of the divine law.
You are she who persuaded him, him, who the devil was not valiant enough to attack you destroyed.
So God’s image man on account of your dessert, that is death.
Even the son of God had to die for too long.
Cotton Mather felt that this perception of females was particularly unfair and that all women did not bear this kind of uh rhetoric and this kind of scathing uh reduction.
He wanted to do something about that. So if we look at the next slide.

Reframing Perception of Women

 

[12:07] We will see that this is the front piece of his work ornaments for the daughters of Zion.
And you will see that right under his name.
He includes Tertullian advice for the ornaments of women which uh Tertullian absolutely despised.
However, what Mather does is he takes only the ending of Tertullian, tract and leaves out all of that vituperative language and just takes this beautiful encouraging part, go ye forth now arrayed with such ornaments as the apostles have provided for you clothe yourselves with the silk of piety, the satin of sanctity, the purple modesty.
So the Almighty God will be a lover to you.
Mather also wrote a little bit of a refutation to Tertullian within the work of ornaments for the Daughters of Zion.
Uh He waits about 54 pages to do it, but then he literally talks back to Tertullian.
He writes it is indeed a piece of great injustice that every woman should be so far in eve as that her deprivation should be imputed unto all the sex.
So he does take him on but just very subtly.

[13:25] In 1693 Mather began work on his Bib Americana, the first Bible commentary written in the new world.
This was an important work and he decided to make it consist of not the same format as other common Bible commentaries, rather not going verse by, by verse throughout the Bible and making comments on it, but rather by scanning the writings of.

[13:52] All kinds of scholars from all over the world, from different uh ages and from different callings in life and finding things within these writings that supported the words in the Bible.
And so he, this was the work he uh he entered into in 1639 he thought that if he had seven more years, he might be able to finish it.
However, we know that he worked on it till nearly the last day of his life.
Returning to his marriage with Abigail, he was able to encourage her and to teach her.
So that by 1689 she joined the North Church as a full member.
Mather praised her piety, her obliging deportment, her discretion in ordering his affairs and the lovely offsprings I have of her.
It was very delighted in the Children as they approached their 16th wedding anniversary, cotton mether was thinking that they’d been married a month longer than Abigail had been alive when she came to be his bride.
A strange foreboding came over him as he was thinking about this, a sense of impending loss.
And just a few nights later, Abigail miscarried a son in the fifth month of her pregnancy, which began an illness from which she never recovered.

[15:09] It’s assumed that she was already ill before the pregnancy.
But uh and it’s also pretty well. Most people think that what she had was breast cancer and then it was aggravated by other infections and diseases which were so rampant.
At the time, Mather’s diaries reveal the process of her in of her illness and his strivings with God in prayer.
His encouraging times when God spoke to his heart that his prayers for his wife had been heard.
Mather called these impressions particular faiths and he wrote about them more clearly in the Bib Americana.
They were like little prophecies. He said hopeful signs that lifted his spirits and encouraged his faith that indeed his beloved wife would recover.
But abigail languished for five long months.
And while me and during those same five long months, mether prayed fasted wept and encouraged her to read his diary through these months.
As Abigail grew weaker is absolutely heart wrenching.
She died in December of 1702.
Her last words were heaven. Heaven will make amends for all Mather.
Of course, Brokenhearted, penned a poem for Abigail using her last words.
He posted it or pasted it rather inside copies of ornaments for the daughters of Zion and distributed them to the many women who had helped in Abigail’s illness and to attendees at her funeral.

[16:37] And I know you can see it. I’ll just quickly read it. Go then my dove.
But now no longer mine leave earth and now in heavenly glory, shine bright for thy wisdom, goodness beauty here now brighter in a more angelic sphere.
Jesus with whom thy soul did long to be into his ark.
And arms has taken thee dear friends with whom thou didst so dearly live.
Thy prayers are done, thine alms are spent.
Thy pains are ended now in endless joys and gains.
I faint till thy last words to mind. I call rich words heaven.
Heaven will make amends for all.

[17:19] Mother was now the devastated widowed father of four young motherless Children.
Two months after Abigail’s death, he began receiving letters from a woman in Boston.
Although Mather does not name her in his diaries, she has been identified as Kate mccarty, a very forward woman.
23 years old, she impudently asked him to marry her.
She was also quite clever. She used arguments she knew would sway him such as you are the only one who I know can win me to salvation.
For months, he was tempted, even obsessed with her.
His family disapproved thoroughly including his father, but he could not get her out of his mind.
Only the thought that she would hurt his ministry held him back and still he could barely resist her.
His diary mentions the difficulties he had with celibacy even when his wife had been ill.
But with Abigail gone, he was virtually plagued.
What saved him was a widowed neighbor, Elizabeth Clark Hubbard who lived only two doors away.

[18:27] And she like Abigail was a pious woman very devoted to God and he knew that she would be an example to his Children and to his congregation.
They married in 1703 a year after abigail’s death and had a very happy and productive home life.
Six Children were born to them in the course of their 10 year marriage, which was unremarkable in that it was so happy in the biblica.
And I call that the shortcut for saying Biblica Americana.
Every time Mather’s attitudes toward wives, marriage and Children shows itself as gracious and generous also for the selections he uses to prove that for one example, consider the question asked by his interlocutor about Eve’s creation.

[19:16] This is from volume one of Bib Americana Genesis 221.
The interlocutor asks all the questions throughout the biblica and Mather answers them.
Why was not Eve also fetched and formed out of the earth as well as Adam.
But from a rib of Adam Athanasius uh Mather answers gives us an agreeable reason for it that they might not have occasion to say that Adam was formed from one sort of dust and Eve was formed from another and that the dust of Adam was more excellent than that of Eve and that the offspring accordingly took their good tempers from Adam and their ill from Eve.
So this is a very egalitarian answer from from matter.

[20:02] His wife Elizabeth unfortunately died 10 years after they were married, a terrible scourge of measles and smallpox had uh attacked in Boston and of her six Children, only two survived their mother.
Even when she became ill. She was pregnant with twins and the twins also died.
It was a very, very difficult and sad time.
This time during Elizabeth’s illness, Mather rejected the notion of his particular faith.
He was still very shaken by what he believed had been so solid a way of hearing from God.
Only to find out that in fact, he really had misunderstood and that, yes, God had said, he had heard his prayer which he interpreted to me.
I have answered and will do for you what you prayed.
And he didn’t want to take this on again and shake his faith one more time.

Gentle Parenting Approach

 

[20:57] He was a very notably mild and amiable parent.
According to uh some sources, Mather did not approach the rearing or disciplining of his Children along the lines so often used by Bible believers then and now of Spare the Rod and spoil the child.
On the contrary, he deplored physical punishment and severity.
He wrote in his diary, the slavish way of education carried on with raving and kicking and scourging in schools as well as in families tis abominable and a dreadful judgment of God upon the world.
He preferred instead to make his children’s experiences with him so enjoyable that they dreaded most of all being banished from his presence.
It makes one wonder how Mather could have ever produced the staggering volumes he wrote because his Children were so often with him and he was for all intents and purposes, what we would call today a stay at home dad.

[21:58] Except for preaching and for making pastoral visits.
He was either with his Children or in his study.
I myself have come across pages while transcribing some of the uh books of the Biblica Americana where I would find childlike handwriting, practicing penmanship or um doing sums and on one occasion, a very elaborate design drawn on a partially empty page.
It was always rather charming to find those in educating his Children.
His hope for his sons, creasy short for increase named for his father and Samuel was to prepare them for the ministry.
But what is especially remarkable about Mather is the way he educated his daughters, especially his daughter, Catherine, who was the eldest surviving child of his marriage with Abigail.
Mather was never one to discourage intellect in women and certainly not in his daughters.
He recognized in Catherine a particular giftedness.
She had a penchant for learning much like her father’s and he taught her Latin and Hebrew, she became a mistress or a master, I guess, or mistress of the Hebrew language.
Something Mather was extremely proud of always talking about her that she could read the scriptures in the original language.

[23:17] She also mastered what Mather called the sacred geography which you will find in the biblica.
And in his later work, the tri paradise, the threefold paradise.
She was also good at art in the form of making wax molds.
And she was very good at vocal and instrumental music. So she was quite talented.
She was kind of the joy of his life. Furthermore, she was pious, she visited the sick and imprisoned and she enjoyed reading the works of Johann A and other German Piet discovered by Mather in his middle years, after his wife Elizabeth’s death in 1713.
And his mother’s in 1714, mother became somewhat understandably rather downcast.
He looked hopefully to the beginning of what he hoped would be the millennium, the return of Christ to set up his kingdom, which he now expected and hoped for in about 1716, as he had once expected it in 1697 and it had not occurred.

[24:18] So it was kind of a low time for him in his life in November, 1714, a prominent businessman named John George died at the age of 49, in Boston leaving his beautiful and wealthy wife behind.
And this is a little bit surprising for what we think of as Cotton Mather.
Within a month of John’s death, Cotton Mather presented himself at her door with his Children.

[24:48] This is how Mather began his courtship just by showing up and introducing himself and his Children to her.
This quote that you’re seeing on the screen is from a letter he wrote describing himself. This is of course to Lydia.
Uh Lydia George describing himself in the third person as a man who strove to do good, even to those who harmed him making the case.
That if that were true, how much more beneficent and wonderful would he be to someone he loved as much as Lydia?
Another excerpt here uh shows other letters pressing her to consider him. I like this one.
I was never got so far into it as I am now with unspeakable joy, as I now with unspeakable joy, find myself and now my lovely creature.
Do you go study my lesson and get beyond me?
And this one my inexpressible. I’m afraid you haven’t been well because my head has ached pretty much this afternoon.
The pain of my heart will be much greater than that of my head if it really be so signed one who loves you inexpressibly.

[26:03] Lydia’s reaction to all of this courtship and his charm and his letters was flat rejection.
She basically told him go away, think no more of it. It’s never going to happen.
But he was very persistent. I don’t have time to get into all the ways he had other people contact her in different things.
But in spite of how, in spite of her firm refusals and discouragements toward Mather.
On July 24th, 1715, both Mather and Lydia signed the following document.
I was even a little surprised to find they had prenuptial prenuptial agreements in those days.
But this is how theirs read according to uh this was promising that Lydia would have full control of her inheritance that she had received from her father, a very wealthy man when he died.
And her husband, who was one of the uh leading civic and uh business merchants in all of Boston.

[27:07] But she’s saying that she’s gonna control this money according to her own mind and will to empower and employ as she shall think, fit all the lands, tenements, money, goods, chattels or other estate whatsoever which of right is belonging, appertaining or payable unto her and to take receive, I think they mean reset, receipt and dispose of her own use.
All the issue, profits, benefits and incomes then to be made.
Furthermore, there was the following clause, this is to be done without any let hindrance or denial of the said cotton Mather.
So he wasn’t to have anything to do with her fortune and these were the conditions that she set.
Furthermore, there was an additional clause not shown here that said, that if he did touch any of her fortune that he would be liable to pay a fine of £2000 which was something like 20 years salary. It’s just huge amount of money.
So hands off it was her money.

Marriage to Lydia George and Prenuptial Agreement

 

[28:14] In spite of this, Mather was over the moon and romantically smitten and likely would have signed almost any condition Lydia uh placed or made requisite to their union, except of course, I’m sure he would not have signed the devil’s black book.
He had also signed up to be the administrator of Lydia’s son-in-law’s estate, which was so encumbered with her husband’s that he ended up in charge of that estate as well.
I think he was really not paying attention when he agreed to these things.
The problem was he had no business experience whatsoever for the first year of their marriage.
All was well, according to mother’s diary, Lydia was accepted by his Children and their prayer life was exuberant as was their private time to which he often alluded in his diaries.
But things didn’t stay that way.

[29:07] Immense trials followed about a year, a year and a half after Mather’s beloved and accomplished daughter, Katie, the one we just talked about with all the talents languished, an agonizing eight months with a kind of consumption.
She agonized and her father deeply agonized. And it was very similar to the experience that he went through with his wife, Katie’s mother.
He prayed, constantly seeking God for healing, for Catherine. He called her his lamb.
She was really, really a special child to him.
However, it really wasn’t to be Catherine died a slow and lingering death.
Finally, after eight months of, of sickness in December of 1716.
But before she died, she wrote down not only while they already had her conversion testimony, but she wrote down literally what is a sermon.
And she wrote it for the young people of Boston.
And she asked her father, she brought it to him. She asked her father if he would please read her words at his funeral.

[30:18] The name of the sermon that Cotton Mather preached was called Victorina and ma utterly brokenhearted did follow her wishes.
He was happy to do it because he felt that the young women of Boston, the, the ones who were particularly spiritually minded had much to offer and had much to say.
And he was always somewhat bewildered by Saint Paul’s prohibition that the women might not speak in the church.

The Preaching Dilemma

 

[30:45] This is what he says about that in Victorina.
Certainly such in one is qualified, meaning Catherine Sutton.
One is qualified now to be brought in as a competent witness to testify unto the pleasures in the ways of piety.
This is what she urged the young people make your salvation.
Sure do it early while you’re young, there are many pleasures involved continuing to the uh quote on the behalf of this young witness.
Oh, our young people, you are earnestly called unto them.
The voice of the dove is heard. So calling to you a dove that has the sun of righteousness.
Now with what glory shining on her wings covered with silver and feathers with yellow gold and strong must be the obstinacy of our young people in their evil ways.
If they will not receive the testimony.

[31:37] So this was empowering. I know that in our century, this doesn’t look like that much.
But it was a big step for Cotton Mather to read his daughter’s words, her direct words and allow them to ring out in the church.

The Trials Begin

 

[31:51] But this heartbreak in the marriage between Mather and Lydia was just the first in a long list of shattering trials.
Things really got very difficult over the next few years, Cotton Mather’s son increase for whom he had prayed for his entire life and made many statements in his diaries about how God would use this young man.
On the day he was born, he made these statements was rather wayward and always a bi a bit of disappointment to his father and a worry constantly.

[32:25] And increase fathered an illegitimate child by a prostitute in Boston.
This was beyond what mother could have ever imagined going wrong.
Furthermore, Lydia, his wife began to have terrible outbursts of rage against her husband.
She was furious about his diaries, she hated him writing about her in there.
She stole some of them, she hid some, she refused to return them.
She taunted him with it that maybe you’ll get them back sometime.

[32:56] He records some of these things uh that she did in the marriage, um that he called her paroxysms.
And I’ll just read you a little bit of his words, the consort and, and, and compare this back to the earlier courtship letters, the consort in whom I flattered myself with the view and hopes of an uncommon enjoyment has dismally confirmed it unto me that our idols must prove our sorrows.

Financial Turmoil

 

[33:22] This last year has been full of her prodigious paroxysms which have made it a year of such distresses with me as I have never seen in my life before.
When the paroxysms have gone off, she has treated me still with a fondness that it may be few wives in the world have arrived unto.
But in the returns of these vicious paroxysms which of late still grow more and more frequent, she has insulted me with such outrages that I am at a loss.
What I should ascribe them to whether a distraction, he really can’t understand what’s going on with her, which may be somewhat hereditary.
He’s basically asking himself or to a possession whereby the symptoms have been too direful to mention.

[34:05] He also wrote, I have lived for a year in a continual anguish of expectation that my poor wife by exposing her madness would bring a ruin on my ministry.
Other intense trials continued.

[34:21] She became very temperamental with the Children so much so that they had to move some of them out of the house.
And then an economic crisis hit the city of Boston.
And then the thing they dreaded the most happened because he was in charge of the estates of her husband and her nephew.

Legal Battles Commence

 

[34:39] People needed money and they dreaded the first summoner coming to the door as did happen and commanding both Lydia and Cotton Mather to appear in court.
This was not the only time lawsuit after lawsuit for debts that were not.
Mathers were uh served on him.
They followed and followed and cost hundreds of pounds.
Over the next few years, Mather was forced to pay off these debts that he had never incurred against both of the estates.
Lydia. Absolutely still refusing to use money from her large inheritance would not help him.

Epidemic Outbreaks

 

[35:18] Another thing that happened was the smallpox epidemic for uh which matter was much hated in the city of Boston because as many of you know, he was uh a proponent of inoculation which people thought was just impossibly wrong against God’s will and highly dangerous.
Someone was so angry about it that, that they threw a bomb, a veritable bomb into the house um and could have killed or blown up the house and for some reason, it did not go off all the way.

[35:48] Furthermore, Nather was turned down twice for the presidency of Harvard in these years and this just utterly broke him down.
He felt like a failure. He was miserably unhappy and Lydia was even more unhappy, during one outbreak where she accused him of not being very friendly or not showing her any friendly looks.
He said it was absolutely ridiculous. It’s a whimsy. You’re imagining it.
And that was enough to set her off so badly that the argument continued into the night during which in the dark of night, she left the house with her maid and told him she would never live with him again.
She was leaving and never ever coming back.

[36:33] This was a very dreadful time for me. Now he was alone.
His former difficulties, not only with the fact that his wife had left the house, but that she had also left his bed, caused him to write what he described as battles with impurities and things like this.
So he was just a man with nobody and just worried about everything and that was still not the last of their great trials.

The Final Blow

 

[37:01] A few days after Lydia left Mather received the terrible news that his son creasy out at sea had been lost and drowned on a voyage back from Barbados to Newfoundland.
This was the final blow.

[37:20] Three days after the news of Crease’s death, Lydia did return to the house, she knew that this was the final blow for, for ma she knew how well and how much he cared about his son.
She was deeply sorry about Crease’s death. And also she wanted to make amends with her husband.
She begged him to put their past angers into oblivion and they seem to have done so one other terrible financial strain was held over their head.
He was basically bankrupted because of these two estates and he only had one more valuable possession, one maybe at all, ever one valuable possession and that was his library and he was in such dire straits that he knew that he was forced to sell it.
Thankfully, members of his church came forward knowing that to sell his library would just be a second death to him.
And they put up the money and did save cotton mead’s library.

A New Beginning

 

[38:14] But all of it had taken a terrible toll on me with Lydia back.
He sort of remained in his study a lot and he continued to write prolifically producing some of the greatest works that he’s known for in these later years, he also made numerous entries into the Bib Americana, even though he knew that it would never be published.
He had received word that there was no possibility ever in his lifetime of having the biblica published just two months before his daughter Katie’s death.
So this was a shattered man.

[38:48] One might expect that having endured such rages and turmoil with the wife, he had so ardently desired but had turned out to be nothing like the meek puritan wives.
He was used to that these upheavals might have negatively affected matters, humiliating interpretations of the First Woman Eve as he was writing in the biblica.

[39:11] However, in the years between 1717 and 1726 Mather continued to procure works written as late as 1726 in England and somehow getting them over into his study and from them, he was able to draw not only benevolent but encouraging and prophetic portraits of the archetypical woman, archetypical woman as the first to believe God’s promise of a redeemer, not as the source of death which Tertullian had portrayed her as and had claimed, but rather of life. This is what he writes.
That Eve was the mother of all living of which I’ll explain in a minute.
The question Adam seems to call his wife Eve. Not until after the fall, why not until then and mother answers before the fall, he called her a woman Isha.
But now upon the fall the promise of the Messiah was made unto her.
And hereupon he called her eve or Hava in Hebrew because out of her should proceed.
He that should give life unto all them that seek him in and by the Messiah, she is the mother of all the living who brought into the world else.
None but sinners and such as without him are dead in trespasses and sins.

[40:29] Adam under a threatening of death expecting that the threatening would be immediately executed, was transported when he heard of being saved from the present execution of it and expressed his joy by calling his Wife Eve or Hava, which means one that should yet live and bear an offspring that should also live and be saved.

[40:52] As we read the excerpt of this last entry, I’m about to show you which portrays Adam and Eve trembling before God, the serpent has been judged and they are waiting for their judgment.
One cannot think, but that the ensuing scene might have resonated with Mather on a personal level, giving hope and restoration, not only to Adam and Eve as we will see in the, in the text, but to himself and Lydia who remained with Cotton Mather until his death.
On February 13th 1728 it was necessary still to give them Adam and Eve such hope as might make them capable of religion toward God, not to just cast them out of the of the of the garden.
This hope they could not but conceive when they heard from the mouth of God that the serpents victory even over themselves was not complete, but they and their posterity should be able to contest his empire.
And though they suffered much in the struggle, yet they should finally prevail and bruise the serpent’s head and be delivered from his Dominion over them.
Now, what could this conquest of the serpent mean? But as the enemy had by sin, subdued them.
He should be subdued by a return of righteousness.
And this must be followed with a recovery of the blessings which they had forfeited.

[42:19] Thank you very much. Thank you, Helen. Oh, that was wonderful.
Just absolutely wonderful.
Um So if people have questions, we’ve got a few that have already come in.
Uh but feel free to put some questions into the Q and A.
Uh And we’ve got some time to ask Helen um a few things. We’ve got some great questions coming in.
I wanna start though by asking you.
I, I think Cotton Mather, I think it’s fair to say he’s certainly one of the most famous people in early American history, right?
If you asked students or, or even just anyone in the in just in the general audience to name an early American Puritan, I think Cotton Mather is probably one of the top five people that would come up uh is such an answer.
And yet what most people think about Cotton Mather has been so shaped by the Salem witch trials and how he’s been portrayed in various books.
The Crucible um uh TV shows like the, the WB channel Salem show where he’s young and lusty.
We so we have this view of Cotton Me that is really only tied to this to him in the witch in the Salem witch trials, right?
So if you could rewrite what people remember about Cotton Mather, how would you ask us to remember him.
What would be different about the way he appears in public memory?
Is this stern, scary puritan?
Uh How would you rewrite him?

[43:44] So many things come to my mind. First, I would want people to know that he was eager to please from his childhood on, you know, his life was overshadowed by his heritage, his grandfathers, Richard Mather and John Cotton, whom he didn’t really know.
But nevertheless, their presence was still over him and his own father passed away only five years before Mather’s own death.
So he never really got to be an independent person as a little boy.
He had that terrible stutter.
He wanted to, to please his father.
But as I had, I left out of my presentation, I wanted to put it in.
But this is one of the reasons Cotton Mather spent so much time with his Children.
His own father spent 16 hours a day locked up in his study and had very little time with his many Children.
And I think that between his great desire to please his father to do what was right to be a good Christian, I think that he was tormented and I think he suffered from that.
I think he suffered from that most of his life. He just wanted to do well and to do right.
And to get that approval somehow and time after time he got the opposite.

[44:57] Yeah, such such great insights today on uh I think you really humanized Cotton Mather.
So, so much different about him that we don’t all know.
Um So a couple great questions. Uh First question was Mather a catch for Abigail Phillips. Did his first wife?
Did they both come from good families. Definitely.

[45:18] Yes. Her, her father was Captain. Oh, I forget his first name now.
But Captain Phillips, he was well known, he was a member of the church.
He was a leader in the community in Charleston, which is, you know, just across the river from Boston.
Um a very highly respected family and this is the kind of people only that a mother would have married into.
Frankly, this is why it’s such a great departure that he was even tempted by this woman out of the blue who really got in his way and was determined.
She even got her mother involved writing letters and then she threatened even to, you know, expose things about him to the public.
His great fear, his truly lifelong, great fear was losing his pulpit because of some sinful thing or something.
So he, he risked that in these debts. He was afraid he was going to debtor’s prison later uh when he was married to Lydia.

[46:18] And uh this was a great fear of his life and he didn’t want to do anything that would cause damage to his ministry for that reason, including even though he was incredibly attracted to this beautiful young woman, he just couldn’t do it.
So he went with the pious motherly woman.
And yet you see these same tendencies come back later when Lydia George is available um because she was nothing like the kind of women he was used to dealing with.

[46:48] Wonderful. So another question that came in is that the asking about the sense of impending loss of his wife’s death seems surprising how were premonitions understood as part of Mather’s theological worldview.
They were very much a part of Cotton. Mather’s theological view.
There are times when he would be preaching as a young man and suddenly have an inner sense that a great tragedy was about to happen.
Meanwhile, fire broke out in Boston and many homes were burned down.
They ran out from the church to put it out.
He would have these things. But so did his father, these particular faiths and premonitions were a constant um theme in increased matter uh in increased mother’s life.
And I’m sure Cotton picked it up over years from living with his father.
Someone’s asked if you know why he was denied the presidency at Harvard, did it have to do with his, his marriage or his debts?
And they say thank you for a fascinating presentation.
I hope that’s nice. Whoever you are, he lost.
Uh Mainly because one person, at least one person accused him of not being academic enough. Oh, I know.
And I think that was the, the most severe part of the blow.

[48:08] Um man who wrote 400 treatises. Yeah.
So, and, and you know, it was Leverett who, who got the position, he had always had some rivalries there.
Um And then later the position opened up again and he was really sure he would get it this time.
Remember his father had been the president of Harvard for many years.
He almost felt somehow like um entitled to it in some manner or other.
And then to be told he could not have it because he was just not academic enough was too much for him to take.
And then who did get the presidency was Benjamin Coleman of Brattle Street Church and the former Minister of Lydia because she attended his church.

[48:52] So it was just knives all around just crushing him.
In fact, he was considered so afflicted. Everyone saw how afflicted he was and he had preached so many times about afflictions being, you know, the result of sin that he was looked at that way like, wow, you’ve had more afflictions than anyone we know you must be a horrible sinner.
And he bore that big nominee also uh eating his own own words a bit on there. Yeah.
Um Pat Vondel asks, do you see a discrepancy between how Cotton sees women as shown by your presentation and his belief in women as witches as shown by his behavior at the Salem witch trials.
And she said, thank you so much for your presentation.
I never thought I would learn so much about Cotton’s domestic life.
I thought that question would come up because it should come up in anybody’s mind honestly.
And the only way I can answer that because I can’t condone what happened in the witchcraft trials or think that they made any sense whatsoever.
I can only say that because he was so theologically and sort of, you know, in this cloud of, you know, religiosity.
I think that he was trying to prove very carefully that there was an invisible world and the reason he needed so much to emphasize that was because the enlightenment was getting, was really getting steam.

[50:16] And in the enlightenment, of course, dealing with science and things that one could prove the world of empiricism, what we can touch and see and prove was taking over meaning.
What if it was only the things of this world that we could literally see that were reality.
Where did that leave faith in God?
Where did that leave the Holy Spirit? Where did that leave any reason to pray?
And he was an apologist for the Bible and judeo-christianity.
So he did not want to see that happen, but he wasn’t, he also was not a judge on that trial.
So many people think that he was participating in the trial.
He was still back in Boston. And I know we think, well, Salem to Boston isn’t far, but back then it was probably half a day’s ride on a horse if that may be longer.
He was at home and, and um suggesting and writing letters saying do not uh introduce spectral evidence in these trials.
This is not a fair way to convict anybody but he like almost every contemporary of his at that time, both in the colonies in England and in Europe did have a strong belief in witchcraft.
So it wasn’t just cotton matter. I’m not trying to make excuses for it.
I wish he hadn’t done it. I think there could have been a better way.

[51:38] Um So Rachel asks, uh she says I’ve been told that Cotton Mather does not have any direct descendants. Do you know if this is true?
And if there are any ma descendants living today or do we know if the line from Cotton continued?
And we can put up that PDF again with the family tree.
We’ve got the, the Mather family tree, there were descendants, but I don’t know if there still are that part. I don’t know.
I’ve, I’ve looked that up myself. Wondering, wondering.

[52:07] Well, we know a lot of genealogists so well. Yeah, we can get them to look into this.
If anybody knows, knows the answer to that. Because that is a great question.
I’ve wondered that I even wondered about, was there anyone who descended from creasy, you know, interval with the prostitute?
Whatever happened to that baby? I’d love to be able to find that out if that child survived.
Um, his daughter abigail, the abigail of his second marriage was married just shortly after he, after cotton mattered, Lydia and she had four Children.

[52:42] Unfortunately, she died in childbirth with the fourth, no, she had three living Children, but the fourth child, uh, she died in childbirth with.
So, uh, those were, I think, daughters, but I’m not 100% sure.
Also Samuel Mather, the son, also of, of Mather’s second wife did survive him.
Only two of his 15 Children. Isn’t that sad?
Survived him. One was Hannah who went by the nickname Nancy who’d had a terrible misfortune as a little girl of falling into the fire.
This happened often in homes. They were all heated by fireplaces and she is about a three year old tripped and fell in and her face was severely burned and scarred as was her right hand and right arm.
And so she was not particularly, you know, she was marred.
She did not uh ever marry, but the other child who survived was Samuel Mather.
And he did have Children.
Ironically, one of his sons also named Creasy died the same way in a shipwreck, drowned at sea, but he had other Children. His daughter.

[53:49] The granddaughter of Cotton Mather is pretty well known in Maaran circles.
Uh She’s Hannah Crocker. Hannah Mather Crocker, and she’s written quite a few books and I have some interesting stories about her and how she even served a little bit as a spy during the revolutionary war.

[54:09] But that’s for another day, Barry Cotton Notes.
Well, first he says he is a descendant of John Cotton Cotton Mather’s grandfather, but he also notes men dominate history so much that we never hear about women.
Can you comment in this period? Can you comment on Cotton Mather’s mother? Maria?
I can she was the woman who made increased ma’s life possible.
She literally did all the work. She, she kept all of the uh finances.
Of course, she ran the kitchen. She did all every single thing to do with the Children.
I think they had 10 Children so that he could spend 16 hours a day in his study.
She ca she was a writer and this was a tradition among women in the Mather family.
I was very valued. Um I didn’t say in my presentation that Mather often mentions that he knew from experience and from years of, of serving in his church.
And from just being in a family that women were generally more spiritual than men. That’s what he said.
And that um it was a great pity that their thoughts and their meditations could not be shared in the church. So he urged them to write.
His mother was doing that all the time and in the fire that happened in Boston that I just told you about a few minutes ago, it spread to their home and her trunk full of writings was lost.

[55:38] It’s a real great loss.

[55:41] Uh Also Mather’s sisters, all were writers and they believed it was just part of uh of being a Christian woman.
The last question is coming from Nicholas and he says, thinking about Mather’s anxiety about his pulpit.
I know that there were other churches that competed for Mather as a young minister.
Uh First church in New Haven attempted to call him.
Do you know of any attempts to recruit him from his pulpit at second church or any consideration on Mather’s part about leaving second church for another congregation? Did you ever consider that? No.
And I think a lot of that had to do with his father.

[56:14] And because he served as the assistant to his father, all those many years, he couldn’t leave his father.
And conversely, his father was extremely dependent on him.
It was, I hate to say it this way, but something of a liberation for mother, when his father passed, not that he was glad to see him die, but it was finally the first time and he was 65 years old. No, he was 60 years old.
That’s right when his father passed away. So it was the first time he could think something, write something, whatever that he didn’t have to contend with his father’s opinions about.
He was very attached to Yale University though.
It was his, um, it was his answer to the liberalism, imagine.
But 300 years ago, the liberalism at Harvard just, just disturbed him greatly and, you know, he’s the one who convinced a hug.
Yale to give the funds for which Yale is named.
I think they used to just call up the college at New Haven.
They did offer him a position in New Haven. He considered it but he turned it down.

Jake:
[57:13] When I air a talk like this, I usually cut it off before the Q and A.
But I thought this audience asked great questions.
So hopefully you didn’t mind too much that I left them in.
If you’d like to get your questions answered and learn more about Cotton Mather and the most important women in his life.
Check out this week’s show notes at hubor.com/two 96.
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Music

Jake:
[58:35] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listener.