Outside the Government Center T Stop

An outbreak of smallpox in Boston in 1721 infected 6,000 people and killed 900, out of a total population of just 11,000. But this devastating toll might have been even higher if not for the actions of an enslaved person named Onesimus and his enslaver, the prominent Puritan clergyman Cotton Mather. Several years before the outbreak, Onesimus informed Mather that he’d been inoculated against smallpox as a child in West Africa. When smallpox hit, Mather worked with local physician Zabdiel Boylston to try the process Onesimus described in an early “clinical trial” of sorts, inoculating up to 250 Bostonians against the disease and tracking their health. The experiment stirred enormous controversy, but ultimately helped to prove that inoculation was an important tool against the illness.

Guest speakers

Rosalyn Elder, architect; founder, African American Heritage Massachusetts; founder and operator of the Treasured Legacy boutique in Boston and Jamaicaway Books in Jamaica Plain, MA

Gavin Kleespies, former Director of Programs, Exhibitions and Community Partnerships, Massachusetts Historical Society