Page 26 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide 2017 - Boston

24  INTRODUCING BOST ON

Athens of America both a museum and library, was first
With the end of the Revolutionary War, organized in 1807 “for the promotion of
Boston’s population began to grow and its literary and scientific learning.” Eminent
economy flourish. Its port boomed, and Bostonians (see pp32–33) at this time
trade, with China in particular, flourished. included the essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Some Bostonians made their fortunes at who formed the Transcendental Club,
sea; others started profitable textile mills. naturalist Henry David Thoreau, novelist
A number of old Boston families – the Nathaniel Hawthorne, poet Henry
Cabots, the Lowells, the Lodges – Wadsworth Longfellow, whose
rose to great prominence boast­ epic poem made famous the
ing of their lineage, their wealth, midnight ride of Paul Revere
and their Yankee independence. (see p23), James Russell Lowell,
The United States elected not the first editor of the Atlantic
one but two members of the Monthly, and poet, diarist and
Adams family (both Boston edu cational reformer Oliver
residents) to the presidency: John Wendell Holmes (see p47) .
Adams (1797–1801) and his son Abigail Smith Adams The Boston Public Library,
John Quincy Adams (1825–1829). (1744–1818) the oldest free library in the
John Adams’ wife Abigail, one of the U.S., was founded in 1852.
nation’s most revered first ladies, made Initially most of Boston’s European settlers
an early call for women’s rights when she came from England, but from 1846 Boston
admonished her husband to “remember attracted thousands of immigrants driven
the Ladies,” for “we … will not hold out of Ireland by the potato famine.
ourselves bound by any law in which When the Irish first arrived they settled in
we have no voice, or representation.” overcrowded tenements along the city’s
Boston soon earned a reputation as waterfront and faced discrimination from
the intellectual capital of the new United the city’s residents, especially its social elite,
States. The Boston Athenaeum (see p51), the Boston Brahmins (see p47). Signs went

The Boston Athenaeum, first organized in 1807 but later housed in this building, which was designed in 1846

1787 Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia

1789 Inauguration of George 1812 War with 1825 William Ellery Channing founds
Washington as president England American Unitarian Association
1800 1820
1796 John Adams elected
1786 Daniel as second president 1807 Boston Athenaeum is founded
Shay’s
rebellion George Washington (1732–99)

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