MATHER FAMILY. Members of three successive generations of the Mather family were Puritan ministers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England: Richard (1596–1669), Increase (1629–1723), and Cotton (1663–1728). Each achieved fame as a preacher and writer, and collectively they exerted a formative influence on the religious life of colonial America.

Richard Mather, who was born in Lowton, near Liverpool, matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1618 but studied there for only a few months. He was preaching at Toxteth Park when, late in 1633, he was removed from the pulpit. His offenses are not known, although they were doubtless ecclesiastical; he did not conform to the practices of the Church of England in all ways. He and his family then immigrated to Massachusetts Bay, arriving in mid-August 1635. The people of Dorchester, Massachusetts, after failing to organize a church in April 1636, succeeded in August of that year, and Mather was immediately...