Boston Brahmin

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A Boston Brahmin is a member of a group of Yankee families who form Boston's traditional upper-class. Members of this class are primarily descended from the early settlers of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies, and characterized by their highly discreet and inconspicuous lifestyle. Members of Boston's Brahmin class form an integral part of the historic core of the East Coast establishment, and are commonly associated with the distinctive Boston Brahmin accent and Harvard University.

Contents

Characteristics[edit]

The term Brahmin refers to a scholar class in the caste system in India. According to Vedic scriptures, a person with deep knowledge, fine intellect, high character and simple lifestyle was considered a Brahmin. In the United States, it has been applied to the old, wealthy New England families of British Protestant origin that were influential in the development and leadership of science, arts, culture, politics, trade, and academia. The term was applied, as many of these families participated in trading with the British East India Company in India, and is also applied partly in jest to characterize the often erudite and pretentious nature of the New England gentry to outsiders.

The nature of the Brahmins is summarized in the doggerel "Boston Toast" by Harvard 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."[1]

Boston's "Brahmin elite" developed a classy value system by the 1840s. Cultivated, urbane, and dignified, a Boston Brahmin was the very essence of enlightened aristocracy.[2][3] The ideal Brahmin was not only wealthy, but displayed suitable personal virtues and character traits. The term was coined in 1861 by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.[4] The Brahmin was expected to cultivate the arts, support charities such as hospitals and colleges, and assume the role of community leader. 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 and colleges,[5] and heirs married heiresses. Family not only served as an economic asset, but also as a means of moral restraint. Most belong 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 distinctive elocution, the Boston Brahmin accent, a version of the New England accent.

Brahmin families[edit]

Many of the Brahmin families trace their ancestry back to the original founders of Boston, while others entered New England aristocratic society during the nineteenth century with their profits from commerce and trade, or by marrying into established Brahmin families like the Emersons and Winthrops. A few families are listed here.

Adams[edit]

Adams family

Amory[edit]

Amory family

Bacon[edit]

Bacon family

Bradlee[edit]

Bradlee family [6] [7] [8]

  • Nathan Bradley I: Earliest known member born in America in Dorchester, Boston, Mass. 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
        • Frederick Josiah Bradlee, Jr. (Harvard-1915); on the first All-American football team at Harvard m: Chevaliere Josephine de Gersdorff
          • Frederick Josiah Bradlee III: acted on Broadway, writer
          • Chevalier Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee (b. 1921), (Harvard-1942): Fmr. Chief Executive Editor of the Washington Post
    • 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 U.S. Continental Army, Member of the St. Andrews Lodge of Freemasons
    • Sarah Bradlee: "Mother of the Boston Tea Party"

Cabot[edit]

Main article: Cabot family

Chaffee/Chafee[edit]

Chaffee family, originally of Hingham, Massachusetts[9]

Choate[edit]

Choate family

Codman[edit]

Codman family

Coffin[edit]

Coffin family, originally of Newbury and Nantucket

Coolidge[edit]

Coolidge family

Cooper[edit]

Cushing[edit]

Cushing family, originally of Hingham, Massachusetts[10]

Descendant by marriage:

Crowninshield[edit]

Crowninshield family

Descendant by marriage:

Dana[edit]

Dana family

Delano[edit]

Delano family

Dudley[edit]

Dudley–Winthrop family

  • Governor Thomas Dudley (1576-1653): a founder of Harvard College
  • Anne Dudley Bradstreet (1612–1672): poet
  • Governor Joseph Dudley (1647-1720): President of the Dominion of New England, Chief Justice of New York, Member of Parliament, Lt. Governor of the Isle of Wight
  • Paul Dudley (1675-1751): Chief Justice of Massachusetts, Member of the Royal Society, Founder of the Dudleian Lectures at Harvard

Dwight[edit]

New England Dwight family

Eliot[edit]

Eliot family

Descendant by marriage:

Emerson[edit]

Emerson family

Endicott[edit]

Endicott family

Salem:

Dedham:

Forbes[edit]

Forbes family

Gardner[edit]

Gardner family, originally of Essex county

Holmes[edit]

Holmes family

Jackson[edit]

Jackson family

Johnson[edit]

Lawrence[edit]

Lawrence family

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

Lodge[edit]

Lodge family

Lowell[edit]

Lowell family[12]

Minot[edit]

Minot Family

Norcross[edit]

Norcross family, original settlers of Watertown, MA

Otis[edit]

Otis family,[13]

Parkman[edit]

Parkman family

Peabody[edit]

Peabody family

Perkins[edit]

Perkins family

Phillips[edit]

Phillips family

Putnam[edit]

Putnam family

Quincy[edit]

Quincy family

Rice[edit]

Rice family, originally of Sudbury, MA

Saltonstall[edit]

Saltonstall family[14]

Sears[edit]

Sears family

Tarbox[edit]

Tarbox Academic and Political Family.

Thorndike[edit]

Thorndike family

Tudor[edit]

Tudor family

Weld[edit]

Weld family

Wigglesworth[edit]

Wigglesworth Family

Winthrop[edit]

Winthrop family[15]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Andrews, Robert (ed.) (1996). Famous Lines: A Columbia Dictionary of Familiar Quotations. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-10218-6. 
  2. ^ Ronald Story, Harvard and the Boston Upper Class: The Forging of an Aristocracy, 1800–1870 (1985).
  3. ^ Paul Goodman, "Ethics and Enterprise: The Values of a Boston Elite, 1800–1860", American Quarterly, Sept 1966, Vol. 18 Issue 3, pp 437–451.
  4. ^ Holmes titled the first chapter of his 1861 novel Elsie Venner "The Brahmin caste of New England"; he had long been writing about the group without using the term "Brahmin".
  5. ^ Ronald Story, "Harvard Students, The Boston Elite, And The New England Preparatory System, 1800–1870", History of Education Quarterly, Fall 1975, Vol. 15 Issue 3, pp 281–298.
  6. ^ Quinn, Bradlee. "David Bradlee". Internet Archive. Retrieved 25 August 2012. 
  7. ^ Quinn, Bradlee. "David Bradlee". Boston Tea Party Museum. Retrieved 25 August 2012. 
  8. ^ Quinn, Bradleeq. "Sarah Bradlee". Boston Tea Party Museum. Retrieved 25 August 2012. 
  9. ^ History of the Town of Hingham, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, Solomon Lincoln Jr., Caleb Gill, Jr. and Farmer and Brown, Hingham, 1827
  10. ^ History of the Town of Hingham, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, Solomon Lincoln, Jr., Caleb Gill, Jr. and Farmer and Brown, Hingham, Mass., 1827
  11. ^ Hall, Alexandra [2009]. The New Brahmins. Boston Magazine
  12. ^ Lowell, Delmar R., The Historic Genealogy of the Lowells of America from 1639 to 1899; Rutland VT, The Tuttle Company, 1899; ISBN 978-0-7884-1567-8.
  13. ^ John J. Waters, The Otis Family in Provincial and Revolutionary Massachusetts (U. of North Carolina Press, 1968)
  14. ^ 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).
  15. ^ Malcolm Freiberg, "The Winthrops and Their Papers," Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, 1968, Vol. 80, pp 55-70

External links[edit]

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