In this video we walk around the park-like setting of Boston’s second oldest cemetery, established 1659.
It was originally called the North Burying Ground but later acquired the name of Copp after William Copp’s well-known cobbler shop near the hill where it was established. From its beginning in 1659 until the 1850s, Copp’s Hill Burying Ground became the resting place of merchants, artisans, and craftspeople who lived in Boston’s North End neighborhood.
Among those buried here are patriots who participated in the infamous Boston Tea Party, and Puritan preachers Increase Mather and his son Cotton Mather, who was a key figure in the Salem Witch Trials conducted up the coast in nearby Salem, Massachusetts.
Cotton Mather
Cotton Mather was a fire-and-brimstone Puritan preacher born in Boston, son of Preacher Increase Mather and his wife Maria. Cotton Mather was admitted to Harvard College at age 11, and remains the youngest student ever admitted to that institution.
In 1702, Mather — who was considered one of the leading intellectuals in the British colonies — published his history, Magnalia Christi Americana (The Glorious Works of Christ in America), with the subtitle: The Eclesiastical History of New-England from its First Planting; in the Year 1620. unto the Year of our Lord, 1698.
Cotton Mather’s reputation suffered much damage after his involvement in the infamous witch investigations and trials up the coast from Boston in Salem. He’s now widely viewed as one of the chief villains behind the 19 executions and other related deaths that resulted from that tragic episode in early American history.