Onesimus teaches Boston inoculation (Boston, MA, 1706–1721)
Record: the document says itPattern: documents line upLens: our readingOpen: not yet proven
Year: 1706 · Places: Northeast, Africa
SUMMARYOnesimus teaches Boston inoculation (Boston, MA, 1706–1721) [Connections: Tech & skilled labor, Nov 5, 2026]
RECORDCotton Mather's congregation gave him an enslaved African man in 1707 (the Paul Revere House says), whom Mather named Onesimus. Mather recorded that Onesimus "had undergone an Operation, which had given him something of the Small-Pox & would forever preserve him from it," a practice "often used among the Guramantese." Mather's 1716 letter to the Royal Society: "I had from a servant of my own an account of its being practised in Africa… he showed me in his arm the scar." In the 1721 epidemic, Dr. Zabdiel Boylston recorded 242 inoculations with six deaths (about 2.5%), while the epidemic killed 14% of Boston. Mather and Boylston's treatise: "a Merciful GOD has taught them an Infallible Preservative." In his diary (31 Aug. 1716) Mather called Onesimus "wicked" and "useless." STATUS: enslaved (per Mather's diary). He was released by paying toward the purchase of a replacement and was still required to do chores for Mather, so his status after release is a conditional freedom. HOSTILE
WITNESSEvery word about Onesimus comes from his owner
PATTERNAfrican medical knowledge entered the colonial record under the owner's name, and the credit for introducing inoculation in Boston went to Mather and Boylston
LENS (WW9)The vaccine idea came across in our arms
OPENOnesimus's birth name and homeland. "Guramantese" is Mather's spelling, and which people it means is not settled
SOURCEPaul Revere House, "Onesimus Mather and the Origins of Inoculation in Boston".