Mather was born in Lowton in the parish of Winwick, Lancashire, England, into a family that was in reduced circumstances but entitled to bear a coat of arms.

[1] He had a great reputation as a preacher in and about Liverpool; but, advised by letters of John Cotton and Thomas Hooker, he was persuaded to join the company of pilgrims in May 1635 and embarked at Bristol for New England.

[2] On 4 June 1635, Richard, wife Katherine, and children Samuel, Timothy, Nathaniel, and Joseph, all set sail for the New World aboard the ship James.

1670 by Increase Mather, the following was recorded; At this moment,... their lives were given up for lost; but then, in an instant of time, God turned the wind about, which carried them from the rocks of death before their eyes.

They tried to stand down during the storm just outside the Isles of Shoals, but lost all three anchors, as no canvas or rope would hold, but on 17 August 1635, torn to pieces, and with not one death, all one hundred plus passengers of the James managed to make it to Boston Harbor.

[8] He drew up the Cambridge Platform of Discipline,[8] an ecclesiastical constitution in seventeen chapters, adopted (with the omission of Mather's paragraph favouring the "Half-Way Covenant", of which he strongly approved) by the general synod in August 1646.