An elite community of Boston
Boston is an amazing place to visit with so much to see.
While exploring, you might even come across a Boston Brahmin without realizing
it. So, who could this be? There existed a wealthy aristocracy in New England,
called the Boston Brahmins (pronounced differently as Bremen or Breymun), a
term popularized by Oliver Wendell Holmes, who compared them to the caste
system and the high status of Indian Brahmins. You might also recall that
Brahmins traditionally sat at the top of the caste hierarchy and played
important social roles in old India; they had access to education and claimed
closer connections to the divine through religious institutions that were more
accessible to them. I won't go into a detailed discussion of Indian Brahmins,
as this is only about Boston Brahmins, but I will add that they were not
historically wealthy, unlike their American counterparts, the Boston Brahmins!
Most well-known Boston Brahmin families trace their roots to old New England families of Anglican origin that settled in Boston before the 17th century and became wealthy by the mid-19th century. The reader might recognize some of these families: Lowell, Ames, Adams, Cabot, Forbes, Shaw, Lawrence, Higginson, Lee, Lyman, Peabody, Sears, Appleton, Crowninshield, Saltonstall, and many others. As a self-proclaimed elite, they were almost always well-established, well-educated, and part of Boston's upper class. Several notable names can be traced back to the old Boston Brahmin elite.
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Boston Brahmins were the wealthy, tight-knit, high-society
families of Beacon Hill or Back Bay, a specific class within the broader Yankee
group, while the "Yankee" term applies to all New Englanders,
especially those of old English Protestant descent, but connected to the less
affluent. Specifically, BBs were the old-money merchant class, often descended
from Puritan families, dominating Boston’s business, education, and cultural
institutions.
These Brahmin elites followed British culture to form a
community of gentlemen and ladies, clearly separated from the commoners. They
aimed to maintain high standards of personal excellence in all
aspects—behavior, manners, and appearance, and prioritized duty. Well-educated,
they participated in the arts and supported social causes, including charities,
hospitals, and educational institutions. Many advanced to leadership roles
within the community, attended top schools and Ivy League colleges, were linked
to appropriate churches, and were skilled orators. Politically, they were
mostly federalists or republicans. Scandals within their households were kept
private, and marriages rarely ended in divorce. Over time, they moved out to
Chestnut Hill, Brookline, Concord, Lincoln, Dover, Beverly Farm, and other
elite suburbs.
Now, let's explore the history of the term. It was
popularized by a doctor and writer, Oliver Wendell Holmes, who coined the
phrase "Brahmin Caste of New England" in his novel Elsie Venner,
which was first serialized in The Atlantic Monthly. Born in 1809, this small
man, who was only five feet three inches tall, stood out among his peers, was
regarded as one of the best poets, and later became a prominent physician and
medical reformer. As a young man, he joined the "Aristocrats" or
"Puffmaniacs," a group of students who gathered to smoke and chat.
Initially studying law, he later switched to medicine. From the start, he was
appalled by the primitive medical practices of the time, such as bloodletting
and blistering. After a stint in Paris, Holmes earned his MD in 1836 and became
a leading Boston doctor. He dedicated himself to fighting quackery and, in
1846, coined the term anesthesia. In 1850, he was appointed Dean of Harvard
Medical School and faced criticism for admitting a few Black students. Holmes passed
away in 1894.
His novel Elsie Venner (about a neurotic young woman whose
mother was bitten by a rattlesnake while pregnant, making her personality
half-woman, half-snake) was published as a serial in the Atlantic Monthly
starting in December 1859. The novel's message illustrated the doctrine of
inherited moral responsibility for other people's misbehavior. The first
chapter was titled 'Brahmin Caste of New England.
He explains: "If you will look carefully at any
class of students in one of our colleges, you will have no difficulty in
selecting specimens of two different aspects of youthful manhood." The
first youth is the common country-boy, whose race has been bred to bodily
labor. Nature has adapted the family organization to the kind of life it has
lived….Many of them have force of will and character, and become distinguished
in practical life; but very few of them ever become great scholars. A scholar
is, in a large proportion of cases, the son of scholars or scholarly persons.
That is exactly what the other young man is. He comes of the Brahmin caste of
New England. This is the harmless, inoffensive, untitled aristocracy referred
to, and which many readers will at once acknowledge. There are races of
scholars among us, in which aptitude for learning, and all these marks of it I
have spoken of, are congenital and hereditary. Their names are always on some
college catalogue or other. They break out every generation or two in some
learned labor which calls them up after they seem to have died out. At last
some newer name takes their place, it maybe,—but you inquire a little and you
find it is the blood of the Edwardses or the Chauncys or the Ellerys or some of
the old historic scholars, disguised under the altered name of a female
descendant.
He continues after introducing a Brahmin character named
Bernard C. Langdon. The New England Brahmin caste often gets blended with
connections of political influence or commercial distinction. It is a charming
thing for the scholar, when his fortune carries him in this way into some of
the “old families” who have fine old houses, and city-lots that have risen in
the market, and names written in all the stock-books of all the dividend-paying
companies. His narrow study expands into a stately library, his books are
counted by thousands instead of hundreds, and his favorites are dressed in
gilded calf in place of plebeian sheepskin or its pauper substitutes of cloth
and paper.
How and why did he come up with the term Boston Brahmin? Interestingly, the term had been in use since the early 19th century, well before Holmes wrote the novel, and Holmes had used the term Brahmin earlier in his 1819 work, The Professor's Story. It is said that he heard it from his father; perhaps it was not widely noticed in those early days or was just a popular term, and, as used, it was not meant to make these families seem elitist, as it later did. Holmes was a Boston Brahmin who, at that time, belonged to a harmless, inoffensive, untitled aristocracy. Thus, after Holmes' novel Elsie Venner, the usage became common in Boston.
One could also see a parallel in Ralph Waldo Emerson, who is
also considered the first Boston Brahmin, since he was the first American to
champion the wisdom of ancient India, and was born and bred in Boston. The
British poet Lord Byron used the term in his 1823 poem, in the context of the
British Gentry, so it may have drifted across the Atlantic from Britain.
The party might consist of
thirty-three
Of highest caste—the Brahmins of the ton.
I have named a few, not foremost in degree,
But ta'en at hazard as the rhyme may run.
By way of sprinkling, scatter'd amongst these,
There also were some Irish absentees.
Though considered elitist, they were usually discreet, and
often the institutions they established did not prominently display their
benefactors' names—such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Peabody Essex
Museum, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, WGBH Radio, and the Museum of Fine
Arts. Like the Parsis of Bombay, they were successful and philanthropic, but
people only learned of them years after their demise.
Quoting Alexandra Hall: If
Boston is, in fact, the Athens of America, the Boston Brahmins hover over our
city like the gods of Greek mythology. Not only were they the ones responsible
for molding Boston into a version of Athens in the first place, but their
reputations are parallel: deities in history, enigmas in the modern day. Rumors
about the Brahmins' influence in old and modern Boston are as plentiful as they
are contradictory. Without a doubt, the Brahmins were (and, some believe, still
are) the shadowy cabal that pulled the city's strings from on high.
In the same article, she describes Murray Forbes III so that
you can picture a BB - Dressed in a square-shouldered tweed jacket accented
with a navy handkerchief, plaid Oxford shirt, and paisley tie, he surges
forward, dark bangs flopping over widened eyes and smoothly sculpted cheekbones
as he pulls his arms back and shakes his balled fist almost maniacally.
Brahmin Bostonians in the late 19th century differentiated
themselves from the New York Robber Barons. Their decline started in the 1920s
when they lost the moral high ground, especially after a set of Brahmin judges
supported the death penalty in the Sacco-Vanzetti trial. Nicola Sacco and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants and anarchists executed by
Massachusetts on August 23, 1927, for a 1920 armed robbery and murder in
Braintree. Their 1921 conviction and subsequent execution are seen as a major
miscarriage of justice, heavily influenced by anti-immigrant and anti-radical
sentiment of the time. It became a cause célèbre for intellectuals and
activists, leaving a lasting and contentious mark on American legal history,
widely viewed as an unfair trial conducted amid intense social paranoia.
After the Civil War, Boston's "Brahmin" elite
shifted from cotton manufacturing to finance, transforming the city into a
major financial hub by investing in railroads, mines, and stockyards. This
strategic change separated local banking from regional industry, encouraging
the growth of national corporate headquarters and overseas investments, such as
the Mexican Central Railway and further into Latin America, India, and Africa.
One should also not forget the Forbes involvement in the
Opium trade with China. R B Forbes shared the general view of his culture and
his era that opium was neither more nor less addictive than or more harmful
than alcohol. This was an age in which opium, though illegal in China, was
legal in the West, considered beneficial, and the potent alcohol – opium
tincture Laudanum was often prescribed.
Darrel Abel, who writes many interesting asides about this
community—definitely a must-read for those particularly interested—tells us
that Boston Brahmins hold conservative views about women and hold onto
old-fashioned ideas about gender relations. The Boston Brahmin man believes
women are purer-minded and more affectionate, but less rational and sensible,
and more spiritual. He adds—His reward is a woman's tenderness and trust, which
inspires him to realize the best in himself.
Interestingly, during the McCarthy era, marked by strong
anti-communist suspicion and political repression in the U.S., McCarthy, who
despised Henry Cabot Lodge, promoted the idea that the Brahmin intellectuals in
the State Department and even the armed forces were soft on communism. Much
later, there was the strict Eliot Richardson, who resigned rather than carry
out President Nixon's plans in the Watergate scandal.
This poem about the BB’s was popularized by one John Collins
Bossidy, who rose at the Mid-Winter Dinner of the Holy Cross Alumni in the year
of 1910, and solemnly proposed a toast
The
Boston Toast, or "Boston Brahmin Toast” by 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.
That is the Boston Toast…..
Bean and the cod" refers to Boston's staple food (baked
beans) and traditional industry (fishing).
There is more to the topic, and I discovered that not only
did we have Anglo-Saxons, whites, but also Black and Jewish Brahmins in Boston!
The Black Brahmins
Side by side with the BB’s, there was also a Black elite in
Boston, which comprised educated, sometimes lighter-skinned, well-established
black families. They too held political, social, and economic leadership roles,
were associated with Episcopalian or Congregational churches, lived in specific
neighborhoods, and were members of exclusive social clubs. They were influential
within the community and maintained private social lives similar to those of their
white counterparts. According to
Cromwell, ‘this group played a key role in shaping Black life in Boston,
engaging in professional, political, and cultural activities, and often holding
moderate to conservative views compared to more radical abolitionist or civil
rights leaders and served as a parallel elite, managing their own social
structure while navigating a largely segregated society’. Some notable examples
include the Nells, the Robinsons, the Garrisons, and the Trotters.
The Jewish Brahmins
The Jewish Brahmins of Boston refers to another influential
group of individuals who, by the early 20th century, adopted the moral, civic,
and intellectual norms of the Boston Brahmin elite. Louis Brandeis exemplified
this, as he admired the BB moral code and saw parallels between the old Puritan
settlement of New England and the Zionist movement, eventually becoming the
first Jew to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Over the years, Boston has changed and become more diverse.
Irish immigrants began to outnumber native residents and then took control of the
city's politics. By the 1980s, Boston had begun attracting many high-tech
workers from around the world, changing its demographics. BB’s still exist, though
holding a lower profile, and I understand that their spoken accent has mostly
vanished.
Elsie Venner - Oliver Wendell Holmes
Multiculturalism Boston Brahmin Style: A History Lesson - Douglass Shand-Tucci
The New Brahmins - Alexandra Hall (Boston 2006)
The other Brahmins: Boston's Black upper class, 1750-1950 - Cromwell, Adelaide M
Boston Brahmins – Ronald Dale Karr
Democratic Voices and Vistas: American Literature from Emerson to Lanier - Darrel Abel
Brahmin Boston and the Politics of Interconnectedness - Noam Maggor
The
East India Traders of Old Salem – Maddy’s Ramblings
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