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Little is known of Brattle’s career in business, except that he amassed a considerable fortune and made several generous gifts to Harvard. He was made treasurer of the college in 1693 and held this office until his death; under his supervision the financial assets of the college were notably augmented.
Brattle was an accomplished amateur mathematician and astronomer and took an abiding interest in the forms of religious worship. He leaned toward the Church of England and for this reason incurred the displeasure of Cotton Mather. Brattle declined to be drawn into serious religious controversies and instead proceeded quietly to organize, with others, the Brattle Street Church in Boston. This edifice was completed in 1699. He was an influential protester against the persecution of “witches” in 1692 and, in that year, circulated a pamphlet “giving a full and candid account of the delusion called witchcraft.”
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Harvard University, oldest institution of higher learning in the United States (founded 1636) and one of the nation’s most prestigious. It is one of the Ivy League schools. The main university campus lies along the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a few miles west of downtown Boston. Harvard’s total enrollment…
Cotton Mather, American Congregational minister and author, supporter of the old order of the ruling clergy, who became the most celebrated of all New England Puritans. He combined a mystical strain (he believed in the existence of…
Witchcraft, the exercise or invocation of alleged supernatural powers to control people or events, practices typically involving sorcery or magic. Although defined differently in disparate historical and cultural contexts, witchcraft has often been seen, especially in the West, as the work of crones who meet secretly at night, indulge in…