Boston_Brahmin

Boston Brahmin

Upper class Bostonians

The Boston Brahmins or Boston elite are members of Boston's traditional upper class.^[1] They are often associated with a cultivated New England or Mid-Atlantic dialect and 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]

Characteristics

Typical dress of the Boston elite, c. 1816–1817

Beacon Hill, a preeminent Boston Brahmin neighborhood in the vicinity of the Massachusetts State House^[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 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.^[15]^[16] 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.^[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]

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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

Boston_Brahmin

Etymology

Characteristics

List of families

Adams

Amory

Appleton

Bacon

Bates

Boylston

Bradlee

Brinley

Buckingham

Cabot

Chaffee/Chafee

Choate

Coffin

Coolidge

Cooper

Crowninshield

Cushing

Dana

Delano

Dudley

Dwight

Eliot

Emerson

Endicott

Everett

Fabens

Forbes

Gardner

Gillett

Hallowell

Healey/Dall

Holmes

Jackson

Knowles

Lawrence

Lodge

Lowell

Lyman

Minot

Norcross

Oakes

Otis

Paine

Palfrey

Parkman

Peabody

Perkins

Phillips

Putnam

Quincy

Rice

Saltonstall

Sargent

Sears

Sedgwick

Shattuck

Shaw

Storrow

Sturgis

Thayer

Thorndike

Tudor

Warren

Weld

Whitney

Wigglesworth

Winthrop

Bibliography

See also

References

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