Cotton Mather

Cotton Mather was a Puritan clergyman and author in colonial New England, who wrote extensively on theological, historical, and scientific subjects. After being educated at Harvard College, he joined his father Increase Mather as minister of the Congregationalist Old North Meeting House in Boston, then part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where he preached for the rest of his life. He has been referred to as the "first American Evangelical".