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Boston Brahmin

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A Boston Brahmin is a member of Boston's traditional upper class. Members of this class are 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 often associated with the distinctive Boston Brahmin accent, Harvard University, and traditional Anglo-American customs and clothing. Descendents of the earliest English colonists, such as those who came to America on the Mayflower or the Arbella, are often considered to be the most representative of the Boston Brahmins.[citation needed]

The term was coined by the physician and writer Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., in an 1860 article in the Atlantic Monthly.[1] The term Brahmin refers to the highest ranking caste of people in the traditional Hindu system of castes. In the United States, it has been applied to the old, wealthy New England families of British Protestant origin which were influential in the development of American culture. The term satirizes the erudite and exclusive nature of the New England gentry as perceived by outsiders, and may also refer to their interest in Eastern religions, fostered perhaps by their one-time trading activity with India via the British East India Company.[citation needed]

Characteristics

The nature of the Brahmins is hinted at by 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.[2][3]

While, for the most part, not of aristocratic background, Boston's "Brahmin elite" maintained many aspects of the culture of the English gentry including the distinction between gentlemen and freemen. Cultivated, urbane, and dignified, a Boston Brahmin was supposed to be the very essence of enlightened aristocracy.[4][5] The ideal Brahmin was not only wealthy, but displayed suitable personal virtues and character traits. The Brahmin was expected to cultivate the arts, support charities such as hospitals and colleges, and assume the role of community leader.[6]: 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 and colleges, and private clubs [7] 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. Their distinctive Anglo-American manner of dress has been much imitated and is the foundation of the style now informally known as preppy.

Brahmin families

Many of the Brahmin families[citation needed] 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 nineteenth century with their profits from commerce and trade, or by marrying into established Brahmin families like the Lymans, Sargents, Emersons, Warrens and Winthrops. A few families are listed here.

Adams

Adams family

Amory

Amory family

Appleton

Appleton family [8]

Bacon

Bacon family

Bradlee

Bradlee family [9] [10] [11]

  • 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

Main article: Cabot family

Chaffee/Chafee

Chaffee family, originally of Hingham, Massachusetts[12]

Choate

Choate family

Codman

Codman family

Coffin

Coffin family, originally of Newbury and Nantucket

Coolidge

Coolidge family

Cooper

Cushing

Cushing family, originally of Hingham, Massachusetts[13]

Descendant by marriage:

Crowninshield

Crowninshield family

Descendant by marriage:

Dana

Dana family

Delano

Delano family

Dudley

Dudley–Winthrop family

  • Thomas Dudley (1576-1653): Governor of Massachusetts, a founder of Harvard College
  • Anne Dudley Bradstreet (1612–1672): first American poet, wife of Royal Governor Simon Bradstreet
  • Joseph Dudley (1647-1720): Royal Governor of Massachusetts, 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
  • Paul Dudley Sargent, (1745-1828) Army Colonel and Revolutionary war hero
  • Dudley Saltonstall, (1738-1796) Naval Commodore during the revolution and successful privateer

Dwight

New England Dwight family

Eliot

Eliot family

Descendant by marriage:

Emerson

Emerson family

Endicott

Endicott family

Salem:

Dedham:

Forbes

Forbes family

Gardner

Gardner family, originally of Essex county

Healey / Dall

Holmes

Holmes family

Jackson

Jackson family

Johnson

Lawrence

Lawrence family

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

Lodge

Lodge family

Lowell

Lowell family[16]

Minot

Minot Family

Norcross

Norcross family, original settlers of Watertown, MA

Otis

Otis family,[17]

Parkman

Parkman family

Peabody

Peabody family

Perkins

Perkins family

Phillips

Phillips family

Putnam

Putnam family

Quincy

Quincy family

Rice

Rice family, originally of Sudbury, MA

Saltonstall

Saltonstall family[19]

Sears

Sears family

Tarbox

Tarbox Academic and Political Family.

Thorndike

Thorndike family

Tudor

Tudor family

Weld

Weld family

Wigglesworth

Wigglesworth Family

Winthrop

Winthrop family[20]

See also

References

  1. ^ Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Brahmin Caste of New England", The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 27, Chapter 1 (1860). 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.
  2. ^ Andrews, Robert (ed.) (1996). Famous Lines: A Columbia Dictionary of Familiar Quotations. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-10218-6. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); External link in |title= (help)
  3. ^ McPhee, John. Giving Good Weight. p. 163.
  4. ^ Ronald Story, Harvard and the Boston Upper Class: The Forging of an Aristocracy, 1800–1870 (1985).
  5. ^ Paul Goodman, "Ethics and Enterprise: The Values of a Boston Elite, 1800–1860", American Quarterly, Sept 1966, Vol. 18 Issue 3, pp 437–451.
  6. ^ Peter S. Field Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Making of a Democratic Intellectual Rowman & Littlefield, 2003 ISBN-10: 0847688429. ISBN-13: 978-0847688425
  7. ^ 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.
  8. ^ Farrell, Betty (1993). Elite Families: Class and Power in Nineteenth-Century Boston. SUNY Press. ISBN 1438402325.
  9. ^ Quinn, Bradlee. "David Bradlee". Internet Archive. Retrieved 25 August 2012.
  10. ^ Quinn, Bradlee. "David Bradlee". Boston Tea Party Museum. Retrieved 25 August 2012.
  11. ^ Quinn, Bradleeq. "Sarah Bradlee". Boston Tea Party Museum. Retrieved 25 August 2012.
  12. ^ History of the Town of Hingham, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, Solomon Lincoln Jr., Caleb Gill, Jr. and Farmer and Brown, Hingham, 1827
  13. ^ History of the Town of Hingham, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, Solomon Lincoln, Jr., Caleb Gill, Jr. and Farmer and Brown, Hingham, Mass., 1827
  14. ^ Hall, Alexandra [2009]. The New Brahmins. Boston Magazine
  15. ^ http://www.masshist.org/findingaids/doc.cfm?fa=fa0057
  16. ^ 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.
  17. ^ John J. Waters, The Otis Family in Provincial and Revolutionary Massachusetts (U. of North Carolina Press, 1968)
  18. ^ https://www.jpmorgan.com/pages/jpmorgan/about/history/month/apr
  19. ^ 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).
  20. ^ Malcolm Freiberg, "The Winthrops and Their Papers," Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, 1968, Vol. 80, pp 55-70
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