Onesimus (lived 18th century)

Slave and servant. Probably born in Africa, Onesimus was first a slave (1706–16) and then a servant (from 1716) to the Puritan minister Cotton Mather. When Boston had an epidemic of smallpox (1721), Onesimus told Mather of a form of inoculation practiced by his people, the Guramantese. This knowledge, combined with information regarding inoculation that was being done in Constantinople, convinced Mather to advocate inoculation in Boston. Performed by the physician Dr Zabdiel Boylston, the inoculations were the first done in the American colonies.