Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

Her father, Thomas Dudley, puritanical financial

secretary of the Duke of Lincoln, provided his
daughter with a careful upbringing and excellent
home education: for six years she read the
Scriptures, and a little later gained access to the
ducal library.
Edward Taylor (1642-1729)
Born in England, highly educated, and living a
rather isolated frontier life at Westfield, Mass.,
Edward Taylor appears to have been outside the
major developments in Puritan New England. His
theology resembled that of his orthodox Boston
contemporaries Michael Wigglesworth, Increase
and Cotton Mather, and his lifelong friend Samuel
Sewall, more than that of Solomon Stoddard,
minister at nearby Northampton, whose liberal
views on church membership Taylor strongly
disapproved.

Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705)

Michael Wigglesworth was born probably in
Yorkshire, England, on Oct. 18, 1631. The family
went to Charlestown, Mass., in 1638 and soon
settled in New Haven, Conn. There was no shelter
on the land allotted to the Wigglesworths, and they
spent the first winter in a cellar hole.