John Cotton (1584 to 1652)
Congregational Church
Puritan cotton.
Birth of John Cotton, early Massachusetts Bay pastor, in Derby, England. Ordained an Anglican in 1610, Cotton began altering the liturgy to his Puritan tastes until the resulting controversy forced him to resign from the ministry in 1633. Emigrating to Boston he worked in the Boston Puritan Church for the rest of his life. He published a number of works.
Mary Reed (1854 to 1943)
Friend of lepers.
Birth of Mary Reed in Lowell, Ohio. Sponsored by the Methodists, she sailed for India in 1885. Her health broke immediately, and she went to the Himalayas to recuperate. While there she visited a leper colony at Chandag, and devoted the rest of her life to working among these people, contracting the disease herself in 1890. She died after completing 52 years of ministry among the lepers of India.