Re: Rev. Richard Mather

["John S. Quarterman" <jsq@mids.org>]

>
>   [1]Quarterman Dates:  April 22.
>   In 1669: Rev. Richard Mather d., .

You may be wondering who Rev. Richard Mather was.
He was the pastor of the church in Dorchester, Massachusetts
(then a separate town, and now a part of Boston).
That is the church from which a group moved in 1695 to South Carolina,
and from there on to Georgia in 1752.

In 1633 Dorchester was ``the largest or wealthiest town in Massachusetts.''
However, in 1635 a group of about 100 Dorchester people emigrated to
Windsor Connecticut.  (Some of them later moved to Georgia.)

Rev. Richard Mather arrived in Dorchester just after the Windsor emigration.

In 1664 he drew up a petition on behalf of the people of Dorchester
to the General Court.  He did this because they were concerned that
the Restoration of the Stuart monarchs in 1660 would affect the liberties
the colony had enjoyed under Cromwell (remember, these were Puritans).
He wrote, in part:

 ``It is our Humble request that the liberty of or churches &
 faithfull ministry in this collony may bee still continued, without
 the imposition of any such Injunction not ordained of god,
 weh consciences truly tender would be troubled withall, but
 that as hitherto our churches and ministers haue bine freed from
 such human inuentions & impositions, soe they may bee still, it
 bein well knowne to the world that to be freed therefrom was
 one spetiall cause that moued many to remoue from their deare
 natiue country Into this wilderness, & how lamentable &
 grieuous it would bee to be here burdened & encumbered againe
 with such matters is easy for any to Judge.''

Considering that this petition was signed by over 100 of the inhabitants
of Dorchester, it was probably signed by most of our ancestors who lived there.

The above comes from the book,
 Good Old Dorchester: A Narrative History of the Town 1630--1893
 by William Dana Orcutt 1870-
 J. Wilson and Son, University Press 1893.

There is also a Third Edition 1916, Cambridge, Mass., LCCN 01-11347, 496 pages.

Richard Mather was a grandfather of the famous preacher Cotton Mather.
The first year I was at Harvard I lived in Mather Hall.

John S. Quarterman <jsq@mids.org>
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