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Boston Brahmin

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The Boston Brahmins, or Boston elite, are members of Boston's historic upper class.[1] From the late 19th century through the mid-20th century, they were often associated with a cultivated New England accent,[2] Harvard University,[3] Anglicanism,[4] and traditional British-American customs and clothing. Descendants of the earliest English colonists are typically considered to be the most representative of the Boston Brahmins.[5][6] They are considered White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs).[7][8][9]

A 1768 illustration of Boston Common in Colonial Boston, home to many Boston Brahmin.

Etymology

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Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., who coined the phrase "Brahmin" in a January 1860 article he authored for The Atlantic Monthly.

The phrase "Brahmin Caste of New England" was first coined by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., a physician and writer, in a January 1860 article in The Atlantic Monthly.[10] The term Brahmin refers to the privileged, priestly caste within the four castes in the Hindu caste system. By extension, it was applied in the United States to the old wealthy New England families of British Protestant origin that became influential in the development of American institutions and culture. The influence of the old American gentry has been reduced in modern times, but some vestiges remain, primarily in the institutions and the ideals that they championed in their heyday.[11]

Characteristics

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The typical dress of the Boston elite, c. 1816–1817.
 
Beacon Hill, a preeminent neighborhood for Boston Brahmin located near the Massachusetts State House in Boston.[12]

The nature of the Brahmins is referenced in the doggerel "Boston Toast" by Holy Cross alumnus John Collins Bossidy:

And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.[13][14]

Many 19th-century Brahmin families of large fortune were of common origin; fewer were of an aristocratic origin. The new families were often the first to seek, in typically British fashion, suitable marriage alliances with those old aristocratic New England families that were descended from land-owners in England to elevate and cement their social standing. The Winthrops, Dudleys, Saltonstalls, Winslows, and Lymans (descended from English magistrates, gentry, and aristocracy) were, by and large, happy with this arrangement. All of Boston's "Brahmin elite", therefore, maintained the received culture of the old English gentry, including cultivating the personal excellence that they imagined maintained the distinction between gentlemen and freemen, and between ladies and women. They saw it as their duty to maintain what they defined as high standards of excellence, duty, and restraint. Cultivated, urbane, and dignified, a Boston Brahmin was supposed to be the very essence of enlightened aristocracy.[15][16] The ideal Brahmin was not only wealthy, but displayed what was considered suitable personal virtues and character traits.

The Brahmin were expected to maintain the customary English reserve in dress, manner, and deportment, and cultivate the arts, support charities such as hospitals and colleges, and assume the role of community leaders.[17]: 14  Although the ideal called on him to transcend commonplace business values, in practice many found the thrill of economic success quite attractive. The Brahmins warned each other against avarice and insisted upon personal responsibility. Scandal and divorce were unacceptable. This culture was buttressed by the strong extended family ties present in Boston society. Young men attended the same prep schools, colleges, and private clubs,[18] and heirs married heiresses. Family not only served as an economic asset, but also as a means of moral restraint.

Most belonged to the Unitarian or Episcopal churches,[19] although some were Congregationalists or Methodists.[20] Politically, they were successively Federalists, Whigs, and Republicans. They were marked by their manners and once distinctive elocution. Their distinctive Anglo-American manner of dress has been much imitated and is the foundation of the style now informally known as preppy. Many of the Brahmin families trace their ancestry back to the original 17th- and 18th-century colonial ruling class consisting of Massachusetts governors and magistrates, Harvard presidents, distinguished clergy, and fellows of the Royal Society of London, a leading scientific body, while others entered New England aristocratic society during the 19th century with their profits from commerce and trade, often marrying into established Brahmin families.[21]

List of Boston Brahmin families

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Selected Boston Brahmins
 
Samuel Adams, American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and Founding Father of the United States.
 
Samuel Appleton, American merchant.
 
John Amory Lowell, banking merchant.
 
Robert L. Bacon, U.S. Congressman and attorney.
 
Benjamin Bates, philanthropist, business magnate, and namesake of Bates College.
 
William Alfred Buckingham, American politician, Connecticut governor, and U.S. senator.
 
William Gardner Choate, federal judge and founder of Choate Rosemary Hall.
 
John Coolidge, railroad executive and son of U.S. President Calvin Coolidge.
 
Samuel Cooper, Congregational minister.
 
Benjamin Williams Crowninshield, colonist.
 
Thomas Cushing, Massachusetts colonial speaker of the house.
 
Joseph Dudley, Royal Governor of Massachusetts.
 
William Emerson, Massachusetts minister.
 
John Lowell Gardner, American businessman and art collector.
 
Patrick Tracy Jackson, Boston manufacturer.
 
Abbott Lawrence, politician and founder of Lawrence, Massachusetts.
 
Henry Cabot Lodge, American statesmen and congressman.
 
James Otis, colonial lawyer.
 
George Peabody, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and founder of the House of Morgan and the Peabody Institute.
 
Charles C. Perkins, art historian, philanthropist, and founder of the Museum of Fine Arts.
 
John Phillips, educator and founder of Phillips Exeter Academy.
 
John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States.
 
Sylvanus Thayer, the father of West Point.
 
John G. Palfrey I, leader in founding Harvard Divinity School, U.S. Congressman, and Unitarian minister.
 
David Sears, businessman and philanthropist.
 
Thomas Dudley, first Massachusetts Bay Colony governor.
 
Joseph Warren, Major general and physician.

Adams

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Main article: Adams political family

Amory

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Main article: Amory (name)

Appleton

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Main article: Appleton (surname)

Patrilineal line:[22]

Other notable relatives:[23][24][25]

Bacon

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Main article: Bacon (surname)

Bates

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Main article: Bates family

Originally from Boston and Britain:

Boylston

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Boylston Family

Bradlee

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Bradlee Family Direct line:[26][27][28]

  • Nathan Bradley I, earliest known member born in America, in Dorchester, Boston, Massachusetts, in 1631.
  • Samuel Bradlee, constable of Dorchester, Massachusetts.
    • Nathaniel Bradlee, Boston Tea Party participant, member of Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association.
    • Josiah Bradlee I, Boston Tea Party participant; m. Hannah Putnam.
    • Joseph Putnam Bradlee (1783–1838), Commander of the New England Guards, chairman of the State Central Committee, Director and then President of the Boston City Council.
    • Samuel Bradlee Jr., lieutenant colonel during the American Revolutionary War.
    • Thomas Bradlee, Boston Tea Party participant; member of Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association; Member of the St. Andrews Lodge of Freemasons.
    • David Bradlee, Boston Tea Party participant; Captain in the Continental Army, member of the St. Andrews Lodge of Freemasons.
    • Sarah Bradlee, "Mother of the Boston Tea Party".

Brinley

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Brinley Family of Boston, Newport, Rhode Island, and Shelter Island, New York:

  • Francis Brinley, Esq. (1632–1719), arrived from England in 1651 after the English Civil War, with his two sisters, children of Thomas Brinley, auditor to King Charles I&II, his original home became Newport's White Horse Tavern, Judge, book collector, land-owner (RI, MA, NJ), Governor's assistant, m: Hannah Carr (niece of RI Gov. Caleb Carr). Boston estate at Hanover and Elm, current site of Government Center.
    • William Brinley, Esq. (1656–1704), first son of Francis, Judge in Newport, co-founder of Trinity Church, Newport, first Anglican church in RI, disinherited by father after marriage.
      • William Brinley, Esq. (1677–1753), only child of Wm. Brinley, Judge in Monmouth, NJ, passed over for younger cousin Francis Brinley.
        • John Brinley (1713–1775), Brinley grist mill owner in Oakhurst, NJ.
          • William Brinley (1754–1840), Major in Revolutionary War.
            • Sylvester C. Brinley (1816–1905), founded Brinley, Ohio (a.k.a. Brinley Station) in 1855.
    • Thomas Brinley (1661–1693), second son of Francis, Boston/London merchant, co-founder of King's Chapel, Boston, first Anglican church in colonial New England.
  • Anne Brinley Coddington (1628–1708), third wife of Governor William Coddington, who arrived with the Winthrop fleet in 1630 and became an early MA magistrate, the first Governor of Rhode Island/founder of Portsmouth and Newport, RI, and mother and grandmother of subsequent Governors.
  • Grisell Brinley Sylvester (1635–1687), wife of Nathaniel Sylvester, together they became the first white settlers and owners of all of Shelter Island, NY. She is credited with bringing boxwoods to the colonies.

Buckingham

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Main article: Buckingham (surname)

Originally from Boston and Britain:

Cabot

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Main article: Cabot family

Chaffee/Chafee

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Further information: Chaffee (surname)

Originally of Hingham, Massachusetts:[30]

  • Thomas Chaffee (1610–1683), businessman and land-owner.
  • Jonathon Chaffee (1678–1766), businessman and land-owner.
  • Matthew Chaffee (1657–1723), Boston land-owner.
  • Adna Romanza Chaffee (1842–1914), U.S. general.
  • Adna R. Chaffee Jr. (1884–1941), U.S. general:
  • Zechariah Chafee (1885–1957), philosopher, civil libertarian.
  • John Chafee (1922–1999), U.S. senator.
  • Lincoln Chafee (born 1953), former U.S. senator, former Rhode Island governor, 2016 U.S. presidential candidate for the Democratic party.

Choate

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Main article: Choate (surname)

Coffin

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Main article: Coffin (whaling family)

Originally of Newbury and Nantucket:

Coolidge

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Cooper

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Crowninshield

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Main article: Crowninshield family

Descendants by marriage:

Cushing

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Main article: Cushing (surname)

Originally of Hingham, Massachusetts:[31]

Descendant by marriage:

Dana

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Dana Family

Delano

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Delano Family

Dudley

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Dudley Family

Dwight

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Dwight Family

Eliot

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Eliot Family

Emerson

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Emerson Family

Endicott

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Endicott Family Salem:

Dedham:

Everett

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Everett Family

Descendants through the marriage of Sarah Preston Everett (1796–1866) and noted journalist Nathan Hale (1784–1863):

Fabens

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Of Marblehead and Salem:[33]

  • William Fabens (1810–1883), lawyer, member of Assembly, Senate.[33]
  • Samuel Augustus Fabens (1813–1899), master mariner in the East India and California trade.[33]
  • Francis Alfred Fabens (1814–1872), mercantile businessman, San Francisco judge, attorney.[33]
  • Joseph Warren Fabens (1821–1875), U.S. Consul at Cayenne, businessman, Envoy Extraordinary of the Dominican Republic.[33]
  • George Wilson Fabens (1857–1939), attorney, land commissioner and superintendent of Southern Pacific Railroad, namesake of Fabens, Texas.[35]

Forbes

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Forbes Family

Gardner

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Gardner Family Originally of Essex county:

Gillett

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  • Jonathan Gillett (1609–1677), colonist
  • Edward Bates Gillett (1817–1899), attorney
    • Frederick Huntington Gillett (1851–1935), 37th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
    • Arthur Lincoln Gillett (1859–1938), clergyman
  • Ezra Hall Gillett (1823–1875), clergyman and author
    • Charles Ripley Gillett (1855–1948), clergyman

Hallowell

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Hallowell Family

Healey/Dall

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Holmes

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Holmes Family

Jackson

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Jackson Family

Knowles

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Knowles Family

Lawrence

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Lawrence Family

Descendant by marriage: Abbott Lawrence Lowell (1856–1943), president of Harvard University

Lodge

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Lodge Family

Lowell

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Main article: Lowell family

Lyman

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  • Theodore Lyman (1753–1839), China trade merchant, commissioned Samuel McIntire to build one of New England's finest country houses, The Vale
  • Theodore Lyman II (1792–1849), brigadier general of militia, Massachusetts state representative, mayor of Boston
  • Theodore Lyman III (1833–1897), natural scientist, aide-de-camp to Major General Meade during the American Civil War, and United States congressman from Massachusetts
  • Theodore Lyman IV (1874–1954), director of Jefferson Physics Lab, Harvard. The Lyman series of spectral lines, the crater Lyman on the far side of the Moon, and the Lyman Physics Building at Harvard are named after him.

Minot

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Minot Family

Norcross

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Norcross family Original from Watertown, Massachusetts

Oakes

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Oakes family

Otis

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Otis family

Paine

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Paine Family

Palfrey

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Palfrey Family

Parkman

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Parkman Family

Peabody

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Peabody Family

Perkins

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Perkins Family

Phillips

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Phillips Family

Other notable relatives:

Putnam

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Putnam Family

Quincy

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Quincy Family

Rice

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Rice Family Originally of Sudbury, Massachusetts:

Saltonstall

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Saltonstall Family

Sargent

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Sears

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Sears Family

Sedgwick

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Sedgwick Family

Shattuck

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Shaw

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Storrow

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Sturgis

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  • James Perkins Sturgis (1791 - 1851), wealthy merchant
  • Nathaniel Russell Sturgis (1779 - 1856), merchant and socialite m. Susannah Thomsen Parkman, daughter of Samuel Parkman, an influential merchant

Thayer

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Thayer Family

  • Brevet Brigadier General Sylvanus Thayer (1785–1872), U.S. general (Army), Father of West Point
  • Nathaniel Thayer (1769–1840), Unitarian minister; father of
    • Nathaniel Thayer Jr. (1808–1883), financier, philanthropist; partner in John E. Thayer and brother firm which he left to clerks Kidder and Peabody after his retirement. One of the most generous citizens of Boston donating Thayer Hall to Harvard University; an overseer of Harvard, 1866–1868, and a fellow, 1868–1875; father of
  • Bayard Thayer (1862–1916), millionaire sportsman, horticulturist
  • Eugene Van Rensselaer Thayer (1855–1907), financier, capitalist; father of
    • Eugene Van Rensselaer Thayer Jr. (1881–1937), Harvard class of 1904; President of Merchants and Chase National Banks; Chairman of Stutz motorcars
  • James Bradley Thayer (1831–1902), American legal writer, educationist
  • Ernest Thayer (1863–1940), American poet, author of "Casey at the Bat", and uncle of Scofield Thayer
  • Scofield Thayer (1889–1982), American poet, publisher
  • Eli Thayer (1819–1899), member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts
  • John A. Thayer (1857–1917), member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts
  • John R. Thayer (1845–1916), member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts
  • Brevet Major General John Milton Thayer (1820–1906), U.S. senator, U.S. Civil War general (Union Army); governor of Nebraska
  • Webster Thayer (1857–1933), judge at the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti
  • William Greenough Thayer (1863–1934), American educator; father of
  • Tommy Thayer (born 1960), lead guitarist for the rock band Kiss

Thorndike

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Thorndike Family

Tudor

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Tudor Family

Warren

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Weld

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Weld Family

Whitney

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Main article: Whitney family

Wigglesworth

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Wigglesworth Family

Winthrop

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Winthrop Family

Patrilineal descendants:

Other descendants:

Bibliography

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  • Cleveland Amory, The Proper Bostonians, 1947

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "[People & Events:] Boston Brahmins". American Experience. PBS/WGBH. Archived from the original on August 17, 2003. Retrieved January 7, 2019.
  2. ^ Taylor, Trey (August 8, 2013). "The Rise and Fall of Katharine Hepburn's Fake Accent". The Atlantic. Retrieved August 30, 2023.
  3. ^ Rosenbaum, Julia B. (2006). Visions of Belonging: New England Art and the Making of American Identity. Cornell University Press. p. 45. ISBN 9780801444708. By the late nineteenth century, one of the strongest bulwarks of Brahmin power was Harvard University. Statistics underscore the close relationship between Harvard and Boston's upper strata.
  4. ^ Holloran, Peter C. (1989). Boston's Wayward Children: Social Services for Homeless Children, 1830-1930. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p. 73. ISBN 9780838632970.
  5. ^ Greenwood, Andrea; Greenwood, Andrew (2011). An Introduction to the Unitarian and Universalist Traditions. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 60. ISBN 9781139504539. Retrieved January 7, 2020.
  6. ^ Bowers, Andy (March 2004). "What's a Boston Brahmin?". Slate.
  7. ^ Nobles, Gregory H. (2011). Whose American Revolution Was It?: Historians Interpret the Founding. New York University Press. p. 102. ISBN 9780814789124.
  8. ^ O'Connor, Thomas H. (2002). Smart and Sassy: The Strengths of Inner-City Black Girls. Oxford University Press. p. 87. ISBN 9780195121643.
  9. ^ Nobles, Gregory H. (1995). Building A New Boston: Politics and Urban Renewal, 1950-1970. University Press of New England. p. 295. ISBN 9781555532468.
  10. ^ Holmes, Oliver Wendell (January 1860). The Professor's Story: Chapter I: The Brahmin Caste of New England. Vol. V. p. 93. Retrieved January 7, 2020. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help) It was part of a series of articles that eventually became his novel Elsie Venner, and the first chapter of the novel was about the Brahmin caste.
  11. ^ "A Brief History of the Boston Brahmin". November 21, 2016.
  12. ^ Cople Jaher, Frederic (1982). The Urban Establishment: Upper Strata in Boston, New York, Charleston, Chicago, and Los Angeles. University of Illinois Press. p. 25. ISBN 9780252009327.
  13. ^ Andrews, Robert, ed. (1996). Famous Lines: A Columbia Dictionary of Familiar Quotations. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 53. ISBN 0-231-10218-6. OCLC 35593596. Retrieved January 7, 2019.
  14. ^ McPhee, John (2011). Giving Good Weight. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 163. ISBN 9780374708573. OCLC 871539336. Retrieved January 7, 2019.
  15. ^ Story, Ronald (1985) [1980]. Harvard and the Boston Upper Class: The Forging of an Aristocracy, 1800–1870. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 9780819561350. OCLC 12022412.
  16. ^ Goodman, Paul (September 1966). "Ethics and Enterprise: The Values of a Boston Elite, 1800–1860". American Quarterly. 18 (3): 437–451. doi:10.2307/2710847. JSTOR 2710847.
  17. ^ Field, Peter S. (2003). Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Making of a Democratic Intellectual. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0847688425.
  18. ^ Story, Ronald (Fall 1975). "Harvard Students, the Boston Elite, and the New England Preparatory System, 1800–1870". History of Education Quarterly. 15 (3): 281–298. doi:10.2307/367846. JSTOR 367846. S2CID 147273000.
  19. ^ F. Sullivan, John (2001). Class and Status in America: A Contemporary Perspective. Dorrance Publishing. p. 2. ISBN 9781637640722. were members of Unitarian and Episcopal churches
  20. ^ J. Harp, Gillis (2003). Brahmin Prophet: Phillips Brooks and the Path of Liberal Protestantism. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 13. ISBN 9780742571983.
  21. ^ "What's a Boston Brahmin?". Slate.com. March 2004. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  22. ^ Farrell, Betty (1993). Elite Families: Class and Power in Nineteenth-Century Boston. SUNY Press. ISBN 1438402325.
  23. ^ Muskett, Joseph James, ed. (1900). Appleton of New England. Vol. 1. Exeter: William Pollard & Co. pp. 330–334. Retrieved February 20, 2014. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  24. ^ Jewett, Issac Appleton (1801). Memorial of Samuel Appleton of Ipswich, Massachusetts: With Genealogical Notices of Some of His Descendants. Boston.
  25. ^ Ipswich Historical Society (1906). A Genealogy of the Ipswich Descendants of Samuel Appleton.*. Retrieved February 16, 2014. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  26. ^ Sarah Bradlee Fulton
  27. ^ Quinn, Bradleeq. "Sarah Bradlee". Boston Tea Party Museum. Retrieved August 25, 2012.
  28. ^ Quinn, Bradlee (1878). "David Bradlee". Internet Archive. Retrieved August 25, 2012.
  29. ^ "Colonel Francis Brinley".
  30. ^ Lincoln, Solomon (1827). History of the Town of Hingham, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, Solomon Lincoln Jr., Caleb Gill, Jr. and Farmer and Brown, Hingham, 1827.
  31. ^ Lincoln, Solomon (1827). History of the Town of Hingham, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, Solomon Lincoln, Jr., Caleb Gill, Jr. and Farmer and Brown, Hingham, Mass., 1827.
  32. ^ "William Greenleaf Eliot, Jr".
  33. ^ a b c d e Perkins, George Augustus (1881). Some of the descendants of Jonathan Fabens of Marblehead – via archive.org.
  34. ^ Perkins
  35. ^ History of Fabens, Texas. Fabens Independent School District.
  36. ^ Hall, Alexandra (2009). "The New Brahmins". Boston Magazine. Archived from the original on August 31, 2010. Retrieved August 31, 2010.
  37. ^ "Dall-Healey Family Papers". Massachusetts Historical Society. Archived from the original on October 24, 2007.
  38. ^ "Jonathan Jackson". Our Family Tree. Jonathan Jackson → James Jackson → Francis Henry Jackson → James Tracy Jackson → James Tracy Jackson, Jr. → Francis Gardner Jackson → Francis Gardner Jackson, Jr. → Patrick Graves Jackson.
  39. ^ Waters, John J. (1968). The Otis Family in Provincial and Revolutionary Massachusetts. U. of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-3837-2.
  40. ^ "The May-Pole of Merry Mount, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1836".
  41. ^ "Research Guides: John Gorham Palfrey - the First Dean of Harvard Divinity School: Home".
  42. ^ "Research Guides: John Gorham Palfrey - the First Dean of Harvard Divinity School: Harvard Divinity School".
  43. ^ "Swearing-in ceremony, James Ramey & John Palfrey, Members of Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), 12:30PM | JFK Library".
  44. ^ "John Gorham Palfrey - WikiCU, the Columbia University wiki encyclopedia".
  45. ^ "John G. "Sean" Palfrey VI". Archived from the original on December 6, 2015.
  46. ^ "How John Palfrey is Bringing America's Most Elite Boarding School into the Digital Age". July 7, 2015.
  47. ^ "J.P. Morgan | Official Website".
  48. ^ Moody, Robert (1975). The Saltonstall Papers, 1607–1815: Selected and Edited and with Biographies of Ten Members of the Saltonstall Family in Six Generations. Vol. 1. ISBN 9780934909242. 1607–1789 Moody, Robert (1975). The Saltonstall Papers, 1607–1815: Selected and Edited and with Biographies of Ten Members of the Saltonstall Family in Six Generations. Vol. 2. ISBN 9780934909242. 1791–1815
  49. ^ Freiberg, Malcolm (1968). "The Winthrops and Their Papers". Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 80. Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings: 55–70. JSTOR 25080656.
  50. ^ Howard, Joseph Jackson; Crisp, Frederick Arthur, eds. (1899). Visitation of England and Wales, Volume VII. England: Privately printed. pp. 150–151. OCLC 786249679. Online.
  51. ^ Stark, James Henry (1910). The loyalists of Massachusetts and the other side of the American Revolution. Boston, Massachusetts: J.H. Stark. pp. 426–429. OCLC 1655711.
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