Boston Brahmin

Upper class Bostonians From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Boston Brahmin

The Boston Brahmins 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]

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

Adams

Amory

Appleton

Patrilineal line:[22]

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

Bacon

Bates

Originally from Boston and Britain:

Boylston

Boylston Family

Bradlee

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

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

Originally from Boston and Britain:

Cabot

Chaffee/Chafee

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

Coffin

Originally of Newbury and Nantucket:

Coolidge

Cooper

Crowninshield

Descendants by marriage:

Cushing

Originally of Hingham, Massachusetts:[31]

Descendant by marriage:

Dana

Dana Family

Delano

Delano Family

Dudley

Dudley Family

Dwight

Dwight Family

Eliot

Eliot Family

Emerson

Emerson Family

Endicott

Endicott Family Salem:

Dedham:

Everett

Everett Family

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

Fabens

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

Forbes Family

Gardner

Gardner Family Originally of Essex county:

Gillett

  • 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

Hallowell Family

Healey/Dall

Holmes

Holmes Family

Jackson

Jackson Family

Knowles

Knowles Family

Lawrence

Lawrence Family

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

Lodge

Lodge Family

Lowell

Lyman

  • 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

Minot Family

Norcross

Norcross family Original from Watertown, Massachusetts

Oakes

Oakes family

Otis

Otis family

Paine

Paine Family

Palfrey

Palfrey Family

Parkman

Parkman Family

Peabody

Peabody Family

Perkins

Perkins Family

Phillips

Phillips Family

Other notable relatives:

Putnam

Putnam Family

Quincy

Quincy Family

Rice

Rice Family Originally of Sudbury, Massachusetts:

Saltonstall

Saltonstall Family

Sargent

Sears

Sears Family

Sedgwick

Sedgwick Family

Shattuck

Shaw

Storrow

Sturgis

  • 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

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

Thorndike Family

Tudor

Tudor Family

Warren

Weld

Weld Family

Whitney

Wigglesworth

Wigglesworth Family

Winthrop

Winthrop Family

Patrilineal descendants:

Other descendants:

Bibliography

  • Cleveland Amory, The Proper Bostonians, 1947

See also

References

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