Page 34 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide 2017 - Boston

32  INTRODUCING BOST ON

Eminent Bostonians

Founded as a refuge for religious idealists, Boston has Boston Brahmins
always been obsessed with ideas and learning. Mark
Twain once observed that “In New York they ask what a In 1860 Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1809–94) dubbed Boston’s
man is worth. In Boston they ask, ‘What does he know?’” prosperous merchant class
This insistence on the power of ideas has made Boston the “Boston Brahmins …
a magnet for thinkers and doers, and a hotbed of reform a harmless, inoffensive,
movements and social revolution. Education has always untitled aristocracy” (see p47).
been one of the city’s leading industries. Consequently, Any suggestion that the
Boston is disproportionately represented in the honor Brahmins were unaccom­
plished, however, could not
roll of American intellectual life. Bostonians are generally be farther from the truth. Julia
considered to be liberal minded, and tend to occupy Ward Howe (1819–1910) was
the left flank of American political thought. a prominent abolitionist and
later a crusader for women’s
rights. She also penned the
Unionists’ Civil War marching
song, “The Battle Hymn of
the Republic.” Brahmin Colonel
Robert Gould Shaw (1837–63)
led the all­Black 54th
Massachusetts Regiment in
the Civil War, and Major Henry
Lee Higginson (1834–1919)
survived the war to found
the Boston Symphony
Orchestra in 1881.
Many famous authors were
also Brahmins, notably the
Lowell clan: James Russell
Lowell (1819–91) was the
Malcolm X (1925–65), one of Boston’s famous residents and head of the Nation of Islam leading literary critic of his
day, Amy Lowell (1874–1925)
19th­century reformers, championed “free verse” and
Reformers, Rabble including Dorothea Dix (1802– founded Poetry magazine, and
Rousers and 87), who cham pioned the Robert Lowell (1917–77) broke
Revolutionaries
welfare of the mentally ill, and the barriers between formal
Even while Boston was still William Lloyd Garrison (1805– and informal verse in American
in its infancy, Bostonians 79), publisher of The Liberator, poetry. The Brahmins’ greatest
began to agitate to do things who was one of America’s chronicler was the noted
differently. Anne Hutchinson most strident voices calling for historian Samuel Eliot Morison
(1591–1643) was exiled for the abolition of slavery. (1887–1976).
heresy in 1638 (she moved Malcolm Little (1925–65) The Brahmins persist through
south to found Portsmouth, spent his adolescence in business partnerships, family
Rhode Island), while friend and Boston before converting to trusts, and intermarriage, as
fellow religious radical Mary Islam in prison and emerging highlighted in their ditty: “And
Dyer died on the Boston as the charismatic Black this is good old Boston, The
Common gallows for Muslim leader Malcolm X. home of the bean and the cod,
Quak erism in 1660 Like Malcolm X, Nguyen Where the Lowells talk to the
(see p21) . Spokesman Tat Thanh (1890–1969) Cabots, And the Cabots talk
for the Sons of spent part of his youth only to God.”
Liberty and part­time in Boston, working for a
brewer Samuel time in the restaurant Inventors and
Adams (1722–1803) of the Omni Parker
incited Boston to House Hotel (see p60). Entrepreneurs
revolution in the Traveling much of Innovation has always been a
“Boston Tea the world in his 20s, way of life in Boston. Donald
Party” (see p77). he was later to McKay’s (1810–80) East Boston
The city bubbled Abolitionist William Lloyd assume the name clipper ships revolutionized
over with Garrison (1805–79) Ho Chi Minh. international sea trade in the

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