Cotton, you were born in Boston....you were the son of Increase Mather. At an early age you wrote prayers to your classmates, rebuking them for their wicked ways. At 11, according to some accounts, you spoke Latin fluently and had gone through most of the New Testament in Greek. You had begun to learn Hebrew grammar. You graduated from Harvard at the age of 14 (the youngest graduate of Harvard at that time)...You put aside your plans to become a physician to go into the ministry. You married 3 times and buried most of your 15 children.

You have had many idiosyncrasies...and were described as pedant, neurotic, megalomaniac, and a reactionary...At all costs you wanted to preserve the "Old New England way". The Puritan Revolution that you attempted to cling to was never as all important as you portrayed in your writings.

For all your efforts, you did not invigorate the religion of your time. Jonathan Edwards came along a little later and did that. It is said that "you wrote too much and thought too little for that"...It is said that you often modified or shifted your intellectual positions. Your style of writing was so antiquated that it's almost too difficult for modern readers but you did give provincial Boston a place in the sun.

Most remarkably, I never knew colonial Boston had a Wal Mart only 40 miles away!