Born July 6, 1669, into one of the most educated and influential families in Massachusetts, Nathaniel Mather was no doubt expected to achieve great things. He was the son of Increase Mather, a prominent Boston minister and President of Harvard College, and brother to Cotton Mather, another notable minister and prolific pamphleteer. With such a background, it was not surprising that Nathaniel was studious to a fault, self-critical and relentlessly disciplined, to the extent that his older brother Cotton (who was also his tutor) found himself “forced often to Chide him to his Recreations, but never that I remember for them” His obsession with learning found him admitted to Harvard at age 12, receiving his first degree at 16, and following up with two more over the next three years.
Despite (or because of) his incredible educational accomplishments, Nathaniel was particularly susceptible to the severe anxiety present in every member of the Mather family. His journal entries are filled with self-doubt and paint a portrait of a terribly anxious individual, constantly disregarding his own accomplishments and pushing himself further. After receiving his final degree from Harvard College, Nathaniel began to experience health issues, eventually requiring an incision to be made into his thigh to remove fluid that had pooled there. This seems to have, at the time, been enough to alleviate the worst of his symptoms, enough that he could travel to and stay in Salem (possibly seeking to become a schoolteacher there). While staying in the house of Dr. Swinerton, Nathaniel developed a terrible fever, which by October 17, 1688 had killed the anxious scholar. With his father, Increase, away petitioning the King for a new Charter, it would have fallen to Cotton to handle the funeral arrangements and Nathaniel was buried alongside the Swinerton plot in the Burying Point. His epitaph fittingly reads: ‘An aged person who had seen but 19 winters in the world.’