Family Literacy in Early 18th-Century Boston: Cotton Mather and His Children

In order to obtain a more naturalistic picture of literacy in colonial North America than can be provided by an examination of the instructional texts read by children, this essay explores family literacy in an early 18th-century urban New England setting by using the diaries and other writings of Cotton Mather (1663-1728) as sources on literacy within his family. Mather's extant diaries cover 21 of the 38 years between 1686 and 1724, and include many mentions of his 6 children, from two marriages, who lived beyond the age of 2. The study examines the evidence to see how the Mather children, wives, and servants (especially his three African-American slaves) acquired literacy; what use they made of their literacy abilities at home; how siblings interacted with each other in their literacy activities; and what qualitatively different kinds of literacy experiences they enjoyed, depending on their gender, class, and race. The study concludes that writing, as well as reading, was important in this family; that literacy was a communal activity which fostered interaction between family members; and that Mather acted as a teacher of literacy to his children. The slaves in the household were also encouraged to develop their abilities in reading, and Mather had plans (perhaps unfulfilled) to teach two of them to write. Mather's own involvement with his children's literacy foreshadowed many of the topics of most interest to reading researchers today: the teaching of comprehension and study skills, the cohesiveness between reading and writing, and the relationship between literacy and life.