Cotton Mather was a true puritan. A towering — if controversial — figure, especially following the Salem witch hysteria to which his preaching and writings greatly contributed. "Mather was interested ...

The city’s labor draft records tell us, for instance, that Onesimus survived the 1721 smallpox outbreak, because a September 1738 order lists an Onesimus Mather as one of the 6 men being drafted ...

Yet Onesimus' role in Boston's first inoculations was for years less well-known than the man who owned him, the influential preacher Cotton Mather, famous for his role in the Salem witch trials. U ...

Cotton Mather portrait, circa 1700, ... After Mather learned Onesimus had been inoculated, he sought further evidence, talking to others in Boston’s enslaved community.

Cotton Mather’s response to an outbreak in his community was inspired by Onesimus’s life story. Perhaps no American community is as polemic as the Puritans. One of its biggest personalities ...

Privately, Mather wasn’t speaking as kindly of the man. In his diary that same year, he complained that Onesimus “proves wicked, and grows useless, Froward [ungovernable] and Immorigerous ...

The story of Onesimus, an enslaved man in the 1700s, could persuade more of them to get the COVID shot. Op-Ed: An enslaved man's historic ties to vaccine development - Los Angeles Times ...

And often overlooked in the history of that inoculation is an enslaved man named Onesimus. A 1721 smallpox outbreak, one of many Boston faced in its early years, ...