Boston Brahmin


The Boston Brahmins or Boston elite are members of Boston's traditional old upper class. 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.

Etymology

The doctor and writer Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. coined the term "Brahmin Caste of New England" in an 1860 story in The Atlantic Monthly. 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.

Characteristics

The nature of the Brahmins is hinted at by the doggerel "Boston Toast" by Holy Cross alumnus John Collins Bossidy:
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 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. 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. 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, 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, while others entered New England aristocratic society during the 19th century with their profits from commerce and trade, often marrying into established Brahmin families.

Brahmin families

Adams

Patrilineal line:
Other notable relatives:
Bates family
Originally from Boston and Britain:
Boylston Family
Bradlee Family
Direct line:
Brinley Family

Chaffee/Chafee

Originally of Hingham, Massachusetts:
Originally of Newbury and Nantucket:
Descendants by marriage:
Originally of Hingham, Massachusetts:
Descendant by marriage:
Dudley Family
Dedham:
Of Marblehead and Salem:
Originally of Essex county:
Descendant by marriage: Abbott Lawrence Lowell : president of Harvard University

Lodge

Lyman

Original from Watertown, Massachusetts
Otis family
Palfrey Family
Parkman Family
Other notable relatives:
Originally of Sudbury, Massachusetts:
Tarbox Family
Thayer Family
Winthrop Family
Patrilineal descendants: