Richard Mather, woodcut portrait by John Foster.

The woodcut artist John Foster was a graduate of Harvard (1667), taught school in Dorchester from 1669, and set up Boston's first press in 1675. The portrait of Mather is thought to be the first woodcut printed in America, about 1670, the year after the sitter's death at which time it would have been printed in Cambridge, which had the only press available at that time.