The Last Decades of Puritan Boston
Cotton Mather was born in 1663 in the house of his grandfather, John Cotton, in the upper left of the map, just above where Tremont, Queen, and Sudbury Streets converge. Cotton lived in North Square as a boy, just left of the (B) marking the Mathers’ North Church meetinghouse. From age 7 to 11, Cotton walked daily from North Square to Ezekiel Cheever’s school (c) in the upper left of the map. Young Cotton attended there in the early 1670s before the Anglican church, “King’s Chapel” (E), was built in 1688. Cotton’s schoolmates Thomas and William Brattle lived on Brattle Street. Another schoolmate, John Leverett, grew up just left of First Church meetinghouse (A). After graduating from Harvard, Cotton moved into his parents’ new house on North (Hanover) Street above the “th” in North. After marriage Cotton bought a nice house to the right of the (L). Beginning in 1714 Cotton rented a house on Ship Street near Fleet Street. The Mather family tomb is in the “burying place” on the right near the Snow Hill windmill. (Detail from William Burgis’s map of Boston published in 1728, the year Cotton Mather died. Map reproduction courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library.)
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