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Cotton Mather thought that New England suffered as much as any other portion of the world from lightning, or, as he termed it, thunder, it being in his day generally supposed that thunder and not lightning caused the damage. Lightning had struck buildings, trees, animals and people from the time of the earliest settlement, but it does not appear to have caused very much damage in any one season until 1768. The scattered buildings and people had but slight chance of being injured by lightning on account of their small number and wide separation.