Boston Brahmin

The Boston Brahmins or Boston elite are members of Boston's traditional old upper class.[1] They are often associated with Harvard University, Anglicanism, aristocratic clubs such as the Somerset in Boston, the Knickerbocker in New York, the Metropolitan in Washington D.C., and traditional Anglo-American customs and clothing. Descendants of the earliest English colonists are typically considered to be the most representative of the Boston Brahmins.[2][3]

Colonial Boston— the Boston Common in 1768

The doctor and writer Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. coined the term "Brahmin Caste of New England" in an 1860 story in The Atlantic Monthly.[4] The term Brahmin refers to the highest-ranking caste of people in the traditional Hindu caste system in India; by extension, it was applied in the United States to the old, wealthy New England families of British Protestant origin which became influential in the development of American institutions and culture over the course of its history. The influence of this old gentry is lesser in modern times, although some vestiges of it remain, primarily in the institutions and ideals that they championed in their heyday.[5]

Characteristics

Typical dress of the Boston elite

The nature of the Brahmins is hinted at by 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.[6][7]

While some 19th-century Brahmin families of large fortune were of bourgeois origin, still fewer were of a somewhat 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 landowners 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.[8][9] The ideal Brahmin was not only wealthy, but displayed what was considered suitable personal virtues and character traits.

The Brahmin was expected to maintain the customary English reserve in his dress, manner, and deportment, cultivate the arts, support charities such as hospitals and colleges, and assume the role of community leader.[10]: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. The total system was buttressed by the strong extended family ties present in Boston society. Young men attended the same prep schools, colleges, and private clubs,[11] 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, although some were Congregationalists or Methodists. 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.[12]

Brahmin families

Selected Boston Brahmin
American statesman, Governor of Massachusetts, and founding father, Samuel Adams
American merchant, Samuel Appleton
Banking merchant, John Amory Lowell
U.S. Congressman and lawyer, Robert L. Bacon
Philanthropist, business magnate, namesake of Bates College, Benjamin Bates.
Federal judge, founder of Choate Rosemary Hall, William Gardner Choate
Railroad executive and son of U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, John Coolidge
Congregational minister, Samuel Cooper
Massachusetts colonial speaker of the house, Thomas Cushing
Royal Governor of Massachusetts, Joseph Dudley
Massachusetts minister, William Emerson
American businessman and art collector, John Lowell Gardner
Boston manufacturer, Patrick Tracy Jackson
Politician and founder of Lawrence, Abbott Lawrence
American statesmen and congressman, Henry Cabot Lodge
Colonial lawyer, James Otis
Entrepreneur and philanthropist who founded the House of Morgan and the Peabody Institute, George Peabody
Art historian, philanthropist, founder of the Museum of Fine Arts, Charles C. Perkins
Educator and founder of Phillips Exeter Academy, John Phillips
President of the United States, John Quincy Adams
Sylvanus Thayer, the Father of West Point
John G. Palfrey I, Played a leading role in the creation of Harvard Divinity School, U.S. Congressman, Unitarian minister
Businessman and philanthropist, David Sears
U.S Congressman, John K. Tarbox
Major general and doctor, Joseph Warren

Adams

Adams Family

Amory

Amory Family

Appleton

Appleton Family

Patrilineal line:[13]

Other notable relatives:[14][15][16]

Bacon

Bacon Family

Bates

Bates family

Originally from Boston and Britain:

Boylston

Boylston Family

Bradlee

Bradlee Family

Direct line:[20][21][22]

  • 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
      • Josiah Bradlee III (Harvard): m. Alice Crowninsheld
      • Frederick Josiah Bradlee I (Harvard): Director of the Boston Bank
    • 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

Cabot

Chaffee/Chafee

Chaffee Family

Originally of Hingham, Massachusetts:[23]

  • Thomas Chaffee (1610–1683), businessman and landowner
  • Jonathon Chaffee (1678–1766), businessman and landowner
  • Matthew Chaffee (1657–1723), Boston landowner
  • 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 (b. 1953): former U.S. senator, former Rhode Island governor, 2016 U.S. presidential candidate for the Democratic party

Choate

Choate Family

Coffin

Coffin Family

Originally of Newbury and Nantucket:

Coolidge

Cooper

Crowninshield

Crowninshield Family

Descendants by marriage:

Cushing

Cushing Family

Originally of Hingham, Massachusetts:[24]

Descendant by marriage:

Dana

Dana Family

  • Richard Dana (1699–1772): colonial Boston politician
  • Francis Dana (1743–1811): revolutionary
  • Richard Henry Dana, Sr. (1787–1879): lawyer, author
  • Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (1815–1882): lawyer, author (Two Years Before the Mast)

Delano

Delano Family

Dudley

Dudley Family

Dwight

Dwight Family

Eliot

Eliot Family

Emerson

Emerson Family

Endicott

Endicott Family

Salem:

Dedham:

Fabens

Of Marblehead and Salem:[25]

  • William Fabens (1810–1883): lawyer, member of Assembly, Senate[26]
  • Samuel Augustus Fabens (1813–1899): master mariner in the East India and California trade[28]
  • Francis Alfred Fabens (1814–1872): mercantile businessman, San Francisco judge, attorney[29]
  • Joseph Warren Fabens (1821–1875): U.S. Consul at Cayenne, businessman, Envoy Extraordinary of the Dominican Republic[30]
  • George Wilson Fabens (1857–1939): attorney, land commissioner and superintendent of Southern Pacific Railroad, namesake of Fabens, Texas[31]

Forbes

Forbes Family

Gardner

Gardner Family

Originally of Essex county:

  • Samuel Pickering Gardner (1767–1843):[32] merchant
  • John Lowell Gardner (1808–1884): merchant
  • John Lowell Gardner II (1837–1898): merchant
  • Augustus P. Gardner (1865–1918): U.S. congressman

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

Hallowell

Hallowell Family

Healey/Dall

Holmes

Holmes Family

  • Abiel Holmes (1763–1837): clergyman
    • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894): doctor, author
      • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935): U.S. Supreme Court justice

Jackson

Jackson 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; eponym of the Lyman series of spectral lines. The crater Lyman on the far side of the Moon is named after him, as is the Lyman Physics Building at Harvard.

Minot

Minot Family

  • Charles Sedgwick Minot (1852–1914): anatomist
  • George Richards Minot (1885–1950): winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine
  • Henry Davis Minot (1859–1890): ornithologist
  • Susan Minot (b. 1956): author
  • Alexandria Minot (b. 1981): lawyer, human rights activist

Norcross

Norcross family

Original from Watertown, Massachusetts

Oakes

Oakes family

Otis

Otis 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:

  • Deacon Edmund Rice (1594–1663): colonist
  • Alexander Hamilton Rice (1818–1895): industrialist, mayor of Boston, governor of Massachusetts, U.S. congressman
    • Alexander Hamilton Rice, Jr. (1875–1956): physician, geographer and explorer
  • Americus Vespucius Rice (1835–1904): general, U.S. congressman
  • Edmund Rice (1842–1906): U.S. Army general, Medal of Honor recipient
  • Edmund Rice (1819–1889): U.S. congressman
  • Henry Mower Rice (1816–1894): U.S. senator
  • Luther Rice (1783–1836): Baptist clergyman, missionary to India
  • Thomas Rice (1768–1854): U.S. congressman
  • William Marsh Rice (1816–1900): businessman, founder of Rice University
  • William North Rice (1845–1928): geologist, educator
  • William Whitney Rice (1826–1896): U.S. congressman
  • William B. Rice (1840–1909): industrialist, philanthropist

Saltonstall

Saltonstall Family

Sargent

Sears

Sears Family

Sedgwick

  • Major General Robert Sedgwick (1611-1656), immigrant, Commander of the Massachusetts Bay Colony forces
    • Hon. Theodore Sedgwick (1716-1757), 4th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
      • Henry Dwight Sedgwick I (1785-1831)
      • Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick (1813-1864), Union Army General
        • Ellery Sedgwick (1872-1960), magazine editor
        • Henry Dwight Sedgwick III (1861-1957), lawyer and author
          • Edith Minturn Sedgwick (1943-1971), American socialite, actress and fashion model
          • Theodore "Ted" Sedgwick, diplomat and publisher
          • Kyra Sedgwick (b.1965), actress, producer and director m. Kevin Bacon, actor

Tarbox

Tarbox Family

Thayer

Thayer Family

  • Sylvanus Thayer (1785–1872), United States general and Father of West Point
  • 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. He was an overseer of Harvard, 1866–1868, and a fellow, 1868–1875
  • Nathaniel Thayer, III (1851–1911): Capitalist and pioneer railroad promoter
  • Bayard Thayer (1862–1916): Millionaire sportsman, horticulturist.
  • Eugene Van Rensselaer Thayer (1855–1907): Financier and Capitalist
    • 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 and educationist
  • Ernest Thayer (1863–1940), American poet, author of "Casey at the Bat", and uncle of Scofield Thayer
  • Scofield Thayer (1889–1982), American poet and publisher
  • Eli Thayer (1819–1899), member of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts
  • John A. Thayer (1857–1917), member of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts
  • John R. Thayer (1845–1916), member of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts
  • John Milton Thayer (1820–1906), United States Senator and Civil War general
  • Webster Thayer (1857–1933), the judge at the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti
  • William Greenough Thayer (1863–1934), American educator

Thorndike

Thorndike Family

Tudor

Tudor Family

Warren

Weld

Weld Family

Wigglesworth

Wigglesworth Family

Winthrop

Winthrop Family

Patrilineal descendants:

See also

References

  1. "[People & Events:] Boston Brahmins". American Experience. PBS/WGBH. Archived from the original on 17 August 2003. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  2. Greenwood, Andrea; Greenwood, Andrew (2011). An Introduction to the Unitarian and Universalist Traditions. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 60. ISBN 9781139504539. Retrieved 7 January 2020.
  3. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/03/what-s-a-boston-brahmin.html
  4. Holmes, Oliver Wendell (January 1860). "The Professor's Story: Chapter I: The Brahmin Caste of New England". The Atlantic Monthly. Vol. V no. XXVII. p. 93. Retrieved 7 January 2020. The series of articles that this article was part of eventually became his novel Elsie Venner, and the first chapter of that novel was about the Brahmin caste.
  5. https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/brief-history-boston-brahmin/
  6. 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 7 January 2019.
  7. McPhee, John (2011). Giving Good Weight. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 163. ISBN 9780374708573. OCLC 871539336. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. Field, Peter S. (2003). Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Making of a Democratic Intellectual. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0847688425.
  11. 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.
  12. "What's a Boston Brahmin?". Slate.com. Retrieved 2020-02-25.
  13. Farrell, Betty (1993). Elite Families: Class and Power in Nineteenth-Century Boston. SUNY Press. ISBN 1438402325.
  14. Muskett, Joseph James, ed. (1900). "Appleton of New England". Suffolk Manorial Families. Exeter: William Pollard & Co. 1: 330–334. Retrieved February 20, 2014.
  15. Jewett, Issac Appleton (1801). Memorial of Samuel Appleton of Ipswich, Massachusetts: With Genealogical Notices of Some of His Descendants. Boston.
  16. Ipswich Historical Society (1906). "A Genealogy of the Ipswich Descendants of Samuel Appleton.*". Publications of the Ipswich Historical Society. Retrieved February 16, 2014.
  17. There is some speculation on the actual date of birth of the patriarch of the Bates family, with many agreeing on the
  18. "Benjamin Bates, Sr". geni_family_tree. Retrieved 2016-03-22.
  19. "Benjamin Bates, Jr". geni_family_tree. Retrieved 2016-03-22.
  20. Sarah Bradlee Fulton
  21. Quinn, Bradleeq. "Sarah Bradlee". Boston Tea Party Museum. Retrieved 25 August 2012.
  22. Quinn, Bradlee. "David Bradlee". Internet Archive. Retrieved 25 August 2012.
  23. History of the Town of Hingham, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, Solomon Lincoln Jr., Caleb Gill, Jr. and Farmer and Brown, Hingham, 1827
  24. History of the Town of Hingham, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, Solomon Lincoln, Jr., Caleb Gill, Jr. and Farmer and Brown, Hingham, Mass., 1827
  25. Perkins, Geo. A. (George Augustus), "Some of the descendants of Jonathan Fabens of Marblehead", 1881. Online at https://archive.org/details/someofdescendant1881perk
  26. Perkins
  27. Perkins
  28. Perkins
  29. Perkins
  30. Perkins
  31. "History of Fabens, Texas". Fabens Independent School District http://www.fabensisd.net/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=337295&type=d&pREC_ID=744789
  32. Hall, Alexandra [2009]. The New Brahmins. Boston Magazine Archived August 31, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  33. http://www.masshist.org/findingaids/doc.cfm?fa=fa0057
  34. John J. Waters, The Otis Family in Provincial and Revolutionary Massachusetts (U. of North Carolina Press, 1968)
  35. https://www.geni.com/people/Peter-Palfrey/6000000001784716766
  36. https://www.geni.com/projects/Early-Families-of-Salem-Massachuetts/7146
  37. https://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/nh/mmm.html
  38. https://guides.library.harvard.edu/hds/john-gorham-palfrey/hds/john-gorham-pafrey/home
  39. https://guides.library.harvard.edu/hds/john-gorham-palfrey/hds
  40. https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKWHP-1962-08-31-C.aspx
  41. http://www.wikicu.com/John_Gorham_Palfrey
  42. John G. Palfrey V
  43. John G. "Sean" Palfrey VI
  44. https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/news/a3371/class-rebel/
  45. https://www.jpmorgan.com/pages/jpmorgan/about/history/month/apr
  46. Robert Moody, The Saltonstall Papers, 1607–1815: Selected and Edited and with Biographies of Ten Members of the Saltonstall Family in Six Generations. Vol. 1, 1607–1789 vol 2 1791–1815 (1975).
  47. Malcolm Freiberg, "The Winthrops and Their Papers", Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, 1968, Vol. 80, pp 55–70
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