In addition, an African slave named Onesimus, who lived in Cotton’s home in Boston, told the clergyman about his experience in Africa and what his people, the Guramantese, did.

The preacher Cotton Mather learnt about variolation from his own slave, Onesimus, and advocated the practice in colonial Boston in 1721.

But that conversation reminded me that this controversy goes back almost four centuries to Cotton Mather, who both defended the Salem Witch Trials, and advocated for inoculation against smallpox.

Onesimus was sold to Cotton Mather, a New England minister and author. During the pandemic, Onesimus advised Mather that smallpox was preventable and shared the details of a common surgical procedure, ...

Summarize the story from 1721 that Andrew Wehrman shares about Cotton Mather, Onesimus, and Zabdiel Boylston. How was the “procedure” initially viewed in America, and how did this change over ...

Onesimus, purchased by Cotton Mather in 1706, was being groomed to be a domestic servant. In 1716, Onesimus informed Mather that he had survived smallpox and no longer feared contagion.

Cotton Mather launched a campaign to educate and convert enslaved people to Christianity, assuring other slave owners that baptism would not lead to freedom because the Bible recognized and endorsed ...

She also discovered stories of exploitation, from the overharvesting of hawksbill sea turtles needed for the lancets’ tortoise shell handles to the enslaved Onesimus, who introduced Cotton Mather to ...