TIMOTHY MATHER’S TEMPESTUOUS LIFE
This website contains historical facts that played an important part in the life of Timothy Mather.
Here some of the most important of those facts.
When Timothy was about 7 years old, his Father, Reverend Richard Mather, who was a Puritan Minister, fled the persecution he was facing in England by taking his family on a 6 week dangerous voyage to New England, which almost killed them all.
Shortly after their arrival in New England, Reverend Mather preached a sermon that gave a biblical blessing to the concerted attempt by the Puritans to completely destroy the Pequot Tribe. This involved the massacre or enslavement of hundreds of Pequots, including women and children. The stated reason for this was the murder of two English traders but the real reason was to get more access to fertile land.
Starting in 1646, Reverend John Eliot, with help from Reverend Mather and Timothy’s father-in-law, Humphrey Atherton, started to convert the natives of New England to Christianity, eventually gathering them into Praying Towns, where they were expected to cut their hair in the English fashion, wear English clothes, live in English houses and farm using English methods. The basic goal was supposedly to civilize them by destroying their religion and culture and replacing it with the English religion and culture.
In 1660, Humphrey Atherton concocted a scheme to seize 400 square miles of land from the Narragansett Tribe. A Royal Commission established by Charles II said that the seizure was void subject to the payment owing on a mortgage of the land. But the English later confirmed the seizure by conquest in King Philp’s War, That War was caused by the English constantly encroaching on native land. It was the most destructive war per capita in the history of British North America or the United States, including the Civil War. The Puritans almost lost it.
In the fictional account of Timothy's life, he will start spying, at the age of seven, for Ousemequin, the most important native leader in New England. He will have an affair and a son with Ousemequin’s daughter Meoneami. He will marry Humphrey Atherton’s daughter and have six children with her. He will struggle to live through the turbulence and violence of early New England with family on both sides of the tensions between the English and the native communities. Despite this, Timothy will find joy and satisfaction in both of his families and in his successful farming business.