Editing Cotton Mather (section)

==Personal life==
[[File:CottonMather house HanoverSt Boston.png|thumb|Mather lived on [[Hanover Street (Boston, Massachusetts)|Hanover Street]], Boston, 1688–1718<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/fortyofbostonshi00stat/page/n15 |publisher=State Street Trust Co|title=Forty of Boston's Historic Houses|year=1912 |page=8}}</ref>]]

Cotton Mather married Abigail Phillips, daughter of Colonel John Phillips of [[Charlestown, Boston|Charlestown]], on May 4, 1686, when Cotton was twenty-three and Abigail was not quite sixteen years old.<ref name="Hostetter" /><ref name="ANB">{{Cite book |last1=Garraty |first1=John Arthur |url=http://archive.org/details/americannational14garr |title=American National Biography |last2=Carnes |first2=Mark C. (Mark Christopher) |last3=American Council of Learned Societies |date=1990 |publisher=New York : Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-520635-7 |pages=682}}</ref> They had eight children.<ref name="ANB" />

Abigail died of smallpox in 1702,  having previously suffered a miscarriage. He married widow Elizabeth Hubbard in 1703. Like his first marriage, he was happily married to a very religious and emotionally stable woman.<ref name="ANB" /> They had six children. Elizabeth, the couple's newborn twins, and a two-year-old daughter, Jerusha, all succumbed to a [[measles]] epidemic in 1713.<ref name="Hostetter">{{cite journal|last=Hostetter|first=Margaret Kendrick|title=What We Don't See|journal=The New England Journal of Medicine|date=April 5, 2012|volume=366|issue=14|pages=1328–1334|doi=10.1056/NEJMra1111421 |pmid=22475596 }}</ref>

On July 5, 1715, Mather married widow [[Lydia Lee Mather|Lydia Lee George]].<ref name="Waldrup">{{Cite book |last=Waldrup |first=Carole Chandler |url=http://archive.org/details/morecolonialwome0000wald |title=More Colonial women : 25 pioneers of early America |date=2004 |publisher=Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co. |isbn=978-0-7864-1839-8 |pages=20–25}}</ref> Her daughter Katherine, wife of Nathan Howell, became a widow shortly after Lydia married Mather and she came to live with the newly married couple. Also living in the Mather household at that time were Mather's children Abigal (21), Hannah (18), Elizabeth (11), and Samuel (9). Initially, Mather wrote in his journal how lovely he found his wife and how much he enjoyed their discussions about scripture.<ref name="Waldrup" /> Within a few years of their marriage, Lydia was subject to rages which left Mather humiliated and depressed.<ref name="ANB" /> They clashed over Mather's piety and his mishandling of Nathan Howell's estate. He began to call her deranged.<ref name="Waldrup" /> She left him for ten days, returning when she learned that Mather's son Increase was lost at sea.<ref name="ANB" /><ref name="Waldrup" /> Lydia nursed him through illnesses, the last of which lasted five weeks and ended with his death on February 15, 1728.<ref name="Waldrup" /> Of the children that Mather had with Abigail and Elizabeth, the only children to survive him were Hannah and Samuel. He did not have any children with Lydia.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Goodwin |first=Nathaniel |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JNQUAAAAYAAJ&dq=%2522Elizabeth+Hubbard%2522+%2522Abigail+Phillips%2522+%2522Cotton+Mather%2522&pg=PA155 |title=Genealogical Notes: Or Contributions to the Family History of Some of the First Settlers of Connecticut and Massachusetts |date=1856 |publisher=F.A. Brown |language=en}}</ref>