AOL Web Search

Increase Mather, Congregational minister, author, and educator, who was a determining influence in the councils of New England during the period when leadership passed into the hands of the first native-born generation. He was the son of Richard Mather, son-in-law of John Cotton, and father of Cotton Mather.

Home. INCREASE MATHER (1639-1723). Even more than his illustrious son Cotton, Increase Mather, is representative of American Puritanism in seventeenth-century New England. As a leader of Boston’s ministry, he became the defender of Puritan orthodoxy during its decline; as president of Harvard, he guided the college through its most difficult ...

In February 1674, Increase Mather delivered a sermon, entitled "The Day of Trouble is Near", the first of many great speeches to the faithful that would make him an influential Puritan leader in Boston and across the growing Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Portrait by John van der Spriett. The Reverend Increase Mather (June 21, 1639 – August 23, 1723) was a major figure in the early history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay (now the federal state of Massachusetts ).

Increase Mather, (born June 21, 1639, Dorchester, Massachusetts Bay Colony—died Aug. 23, 1723, Boston), American Puritan leader. The son of a Puritan cleric, he was educated at Harvard College and at Trinity College, Dublin.