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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]
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]
The nature of the Brahmins is referenced in the doggerel "Boston Toast" by Holy Cross alumnus John Collins Bossidy:
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]
Selected Boston Brahmins |
Patrilineal line: [22]
Other notable relatives: [23] [24] [25]
Originally from Boston and Britain:
Boylston Family
Bradlee Family Direct line: [26] [27] [28]
Brinley Family of Boston, Newport, Rhode Island, and Shelter Island, New York:
Originally from Boston and Britain:
Originally of Hingham, Massachusetts: [30]
Originally of Newbury and Nantucket:
Descendants by marriage:
Originally of Hingham, Massachusetts: [31]
Descendant by marriage:
Dudley Family
Everett Family
Descendants through the marriage of Sarah Preston Everett (1796–1866) and noted journalist Nathan Hale (1784–1863):
Of Marblehead and Salem: [33]
Gardner Family Originally of Essex county:
Descendant by marriage: Abbott Lawrence Lowell (1856–1943), president of Harvard University
Norcross family Original from Watertown, Massachusetts
Parkman Family
Other notable relatives:
Rice Family Originally of Sudbury, Massachusetts:
Winthrop Family
Patrilineal descendants:
Other descendants:
The Lowell family is one of the Boston Brahmin families of New England, known for both intellectual and commercial achievements.
The Cabot family is one of the Boston Brahmin families, also known as the "first families of Boston".
Benjamin Williams Crowninshield served as the United States Secretary of the Navy between 1815 and 1818, during the administrations of Presidents James Madison and James Monroe.
William Crowninshield Endicott was an American politician and Secretary of War in the first administration of President Grover Cleveland (1885–1889).
The Noble and Greenough School, commonly known as Nobles, is a coeducational, nonsectarian day and five-day boarding school in Dedham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. It educates 638 boys and girls in grades 7–12. The school's 187-acre (0.76 km2) campus borders the Charles River.
The Boston Associates were a loosely linked group of investors in 19th-century New England. They included Nathan Appleton, Patrick Tracy Jackson, Abbott Lawrence, and Amos Lawrence. Often related directly or through marriage, they were based in Boston, Massachusetts. The term "Boston Associates" was coined by historian and professor of economics and Marxism, Vera Shlakman in her 1935 work, Economic History of a Factory Town, A Study of Chicopee, Massachusetts.
The Crowninshield family is an American family that was historically prominent in seafaring, political and military leadership, and the literary world. The founder of the American family emigrated from what is now Germany in the 17th century. The family is one of several known collectively as Boston Brahmins, a reference to old wealthy New England families of British Protestant origin that became influential in the development of American institutions and culture.
Winthrop Sargent was a United States patriot, politician, and writer; and a member of the Federalist party.
Amos Adams Lawrence was an American businessman, philanthropist, and social activist. He was a key figure in the United States abolitionist movement in the years leading up to the Civil War and the growth of the Episcopal Church in Massachusetts. He was instrumental in the establishment of the University of Kansas and Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.
John Lowell was a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation, a judge of the Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture under the Articles of Confederation, a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts and a United States circuit judge of the United States Circuit Court for the First Circuit.
The Knickerbocker Club is a gentlemen's club in New York City that was founded in 1871. It is considered to be the most exclusive club in the United States and one of the most aristocratic gentlemen's clubs in the world.
Henry Winthrop Sargent, American horticulturist and landscape gardener.
Dudley Leavitt Pickman (1779–1846) was an American merchant who built one of the great trading firms in Salem, Massachusetts, during the seaport's ascendancy as a trading power in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Pickman was a partner in the firm Devereux, Pickman & Silsbee and a state senator. Among the wealthiest Salem merchants of his day, Pickman used his own clipper ships to trade with the Far East in an array of goods ranging from indigo and coffee to pepper and spices, and was one of the state's earliest financiers, backing everything from cotton and woolen mills to railroads to water-generated power plants. Pickman also helped found what is today's Peabody Essex Museum.
Bowdoin Bradlee Crowninshield was an American naval architect who specialized in the design of racing yachts.
Frederick Josiah Bradlee Jr. was an American football player. He was a first-team All-American while attending Harvard University in 1914. He was the father of American journalist Ben Bradlee.
Paul Dudley Sargent was a privateer and soldier in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.
George Phillips was an English-born Puritan minister who led, along with Richard Saltonstall, a group of English settlers up the Charles River to settle in what is now Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1630.
William Gurdon Saltonstall was an American naval officer during the U.S. Civil War and a prominent merchant.
The Lawrence family is a Boston Brahmin family, also known as the "first families" of Boston, who arrived in Watertown, Massachusetts from Wissett, England in 1635.
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.
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ignored (help)Jonathan Jackson → James Jackson → Francis Henry Jackson → James Tracy Jackson → James Tracy Jackson, Jr. → Francis Gardner Jackson → Francis Gardner Jackson, Jr. → Patrick Graves Jackson.
1607–1789Moody, 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