Cotton Mather was a Puritan minister and amateur scientist who lived in Boston in the early 1700s. When a smallpox outbreak struck the city, a man named Onesimus whom Mather had enslaved recommended an inoculation technique that he’d seen used in his homeland of West Africa. Using Onesimus’s advice, Mather helped other scientists develop a method of inoculation that saved many lives and formed the foundation of our modern-day vaccination techniques. Yet he never gave Onesimus any credit and never freed Onesimus from slavery.
Get the entire Caste LitChart as a printable PDF.
Cotton Mather Character Timeline in Caste
The timeline below shows where the character Cotton Mather appears in Caste. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter Fifteen: The Urgent Necessity of a Bottom Rung
When a smallpox epidemic hit Boston in 1721, people quickly began dying. Cotton Mather , a minister and scientist, owned an African man named Onesimus, who told him about...
(full context)
