Biography of Cotton Mather

Cotton Mather was born in the year 1663 in to a family of New England puritan ministers. He was the oldest son of Increase Mather and the grandson of Richard Mather and John Cotton who ruled the churches of New England for almost fifty years. He is considered one of the youngest one to have graduated from Harvard University in forty years of the school. After returning back home, he found himself in the footsteps of his father being an assistant preacher. In the year 1685, he took full responsibility as a pastor. He is recognized for his Salem witch trials during 1690s and the influence he had on it. One such is his case study of Mercy Short.

Mercy short is one of the most confusing cases of witchcraft crisis in New England at the time of Cotton Mather. In this case, Cotton Mather study about a fifteen year old girl named Mercy Short. Mercy short was the victim of witchcraft crisis. Being a refugee from Salem she was arrested by some men at the North Church during the Sunday service of Cotton Mather. After that she was under the cure of Cotton Mather. Mather tried really hard to resolve the problem of Mercy Short. “Although her first fit occurred in the early summer of 1692, Mather managed to affect a "cure" that lasted for "diverse months," until two months after the final hangings at Salem. Only then did she succumb fully. And Mercy was not essentially an accuser, railing primarily at her Invisible Tormentors without pointing the finger at townspeople and neighbors. Indeed, Mather worked hard to suppress the occasional name that flew from her mouth:” (Kloepfer 36). Finally he was able to heal the suffering of Mercy short and came to the conclusion that witch is the one who should be severe punished not the innocent girls who are affected by witch. “The fact that she suffered at a geographical, temporal, and, I would suggest, psychological remove from the "witchcraft crisis" is significant, for it isolates her case, leading us to consider the possibility that what was happening to Mercy Short was more than a product of her proximity to Salem. In fact, when language failed her, the events in Salem may have provided her a convenient cloth onto which