Wealth Accumulation. CHAPTER THIRTEEN Wealth: The Fertilizer of Family Trees God helps them who help themselves. Benjamin Franklin The accumulation of wealth is not the loftiest end of human effort. Charles Francis Adams, Jr. All social systems are grounded in the division of labor and the production and distribution of wealth. And all advanced civilizations must be involved with distributing the surplus wealth each generation creates. By and large, in middle-class market societies, such as the United States has been throughout most of our history, control of surplus wealth rests with the upper classes. Any upper-class way of life, then, is based on inherited wealth. In this chapter, I shall discuss four main issues: (1) how and when did the family founders acquire their wealth; (2) how successful have their heirs been in keeping (or enlarging) their inheritances; (3) how does an upper class, in each generation, assimilate new men of wealth and their families into an upper-class style of life; and (4) how do upper-class values serve to motivate men of privilege to contribute to the enrichment of the cultural and political life of the society as a whole? The fourth, and surely the most important point, will be analyzed in more detail in the following five chapters, which compare the roles of Boston Brahmins and Philadelphia Gentlemen in building educational institutions (Chapter 14); in literature and the life of the mind (Chapter 15); in art and ar- chitecture (Chapter 16); in law, medicine, and the church (Chapter 17): and 208 THE NATIONAL EXPERIENCE: COMPARATIVE INSTITUTIONS Wealth: The Fertilizer of Family Trees 209 Egalitarian and individualistic societies of great social and economic mobility tend to be hundred-yard-dash cultures; hierarchical and communal cultures are is a major industry in Boston. More than $81 billion of other people's money is more likely to emulate the style of the long-distance runner. Similarly, democ- managed by Boston financiers. Consider: Boston is the birthplace of the mutual racies foster the making of fabulous fortunes; aristocracies, the preservation of fund, the tool of people's capitalism. Approximately 35 percent of the mutual fund industry's $58 billion is harbored here. More college endowment money is more modest ones. As we have seen in the case of family continuity of leader- handled here than in any other city: The budgets of Harvard, Yale, MIT, Brown ship, Bostonians tend to be long-distance runners whereas hundred-yard-dash and many others rely on the expertise of a handful of money men in this city. cut-flowers are more characteristic of Philadelphia. And so it has been with Law firms and private trustees alone manage an estimated $4 billion in wealth. wealth and the preservation thereof. Perhaps there is no better way of introduc- ing this point than to take a look at what happened to the small legacies left by A. Lawrence Lowell once expressed concern that nobody in his family was Benjamin Franklin to both of his beloved cities. still engaged in moneymaking. He need not have. For, according to Lenzner, In a codicil to his will, written in 1789 and put into effect in 1791, the year scions of the "early Colonial families" are now doing well as money managers: following his death, Franklin bequeathed £1,000, or $4,444, each to the citi- "Names like Paul Cabot, Richard Saltonstall, George Putnam, John P. Chase, zenries of the town of Boston and the city of Philadelphia. The money was "to Augustus Loring, John Lowell, and Nick Thorndike still grace the chief execu- be let out upon interest at 5 per cent per annum to young married artificers, tive offices of the city's leading financial institutions." Boston's values have no- under the age of 25." Fascinated by the uses of money, Franklin carefully esti- where been better expressed than when a member of the firm of Thorndike, mated that at the end of 100 years, the value of these two legacies would Doran, Paine & Lewis, the counseling arm of Wellington Management Com- amount to £131,000 (about $582,000) each and £4,061,000, or about $18 mil- pany, told the Globe: "Divorced from Wall Street and the herd, we are thought lion, by the time of their final liquidation in 1991. to have an independent point of view. People think 'here's a group that can sit back and reflect.' " 5 The story of how this money was used in the two cities is too long and com- plicated to tell here. It is perhaps enough to say that as of July 1891, at the end Moneymaking and civic responsibility still mark the breed. Thus, John Low- of the first century, the Franklin Fund endowment in Philadelphia amounted ell (Harvard, class of 1942) for more than a quarter century has worked for the to about $90,000, less than one-fourth of the Boston fund of $391,000. As of Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company, of which his father was once chair- 1962, Philadelphia's fund totaled $315,000, or less than one-fifth of Boston's to- man. In 1972, John Lowell was trustee or director of forty-one institutions (in- tal of $1,750,000. In that year the trustees of Boston's fund decided to begin cluding the Franklin Foundation) all over the land. The breadth and diversity helping medical students. The first loans were made to interns and medical stu- of his financial, religious, cultural, and educational responsibilities are indi- dents, at interest rates of 2 percent during their training and of 5 percent during Cated in the Directory of Directors in the City of Boston and Vicinity, 66th Edition. the repayment period. By 1972, some $2.5 million had been lent to 1,300 stu- dent and intern borrowers. In contrast to the still independent Franklin Foun- LOWELL, JOHN, One Boston Place, Director, Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company. dation in Boston, the Philadelphia fund is now merged into the investment Bailey and Rhodes, Los Angeles, Director portfolio of the Board of City Trusts, which manages some 100 other public be- Bangor Theological Seminary, Trustee quests including the enormous Girard estate. I do not know exactly how this Boston College, Director and Member of Executive Committee money is being used, but I imagine that it is increasing in value just as slowly as Boston Episcopal Society, Trustee in the past. Boston Hospital for Women, Trustee and Member of Executive Committee Committee for the Central Business District, Inc., Treasurer It is no wonder that the trustees of the Franklin Foundation in Boston have Consolidated Investment Trust, Trustee and Member of Executive Committee done so much better a job in augmenting and using this endowment than their Franklin Foundation, Vice-President peers in Philadelphia; for, although trust funds lie at the core of family continu- Franklin Institute of Boston, Trustee ity at the top in both cities, Boston trustees in the George Apley mold have Greater Boston Charitable Trust, Board of Managers International Grenfel Association, Director and Assistant Treasurer long been nationally famous managers of other people's money. "Through its Johnson Securities Company, Director interpretation of their so-called 'spendthrift' trusts," wrote Cleveland Amory Johnston & Co. (Douglas T.), Inc., Director "Boston's First Family fortunes have long been tied up beyond the reach of any Massachusetts Capital Development Fund, Inc., Director power save possibly, as one financial writer put it, the Communist Interna- Massachusetts Company, Director tional." Massachusetts General Life Insurance Company, Director and Member of Fi- nance Committee Today, though hundred-yard-dash speculators flock to Wall Street, the long. Massachusetts Income Development Fund, Inc., Director distance runners entrust their fortunes to the money managers of Boston. Massachusetts Investors Growth Fund, Director "Handling other people's money," wrote the Boston Globe's man on Wall Massachusetts Investors Trust, Trustee Museum of Science, Member of the Corporation 210 THE NATIONAL EXPERIENCE: COMPARATIVE INSTITUTIONS Wealth: The Fertilizer of Family Trees 211 New England Committee for Project Hope, Chairman Maurice Gordon Real estate New England Grenfel Association, Director and Treasurer Serge Semenke Banker and money man Noble and Greenough School, Trustee Charles Francis Adams Raytheon Company Northeastern University, Trustee Louis W. Cabot Cabot Corporation Perkins School for the Blind, Trustee George Peabody Gardner, Jr. Paine, Webber, Jackson & Curtis Pierce Company, Inc., Director Kenneth H. Olson Founder, Digital Equipment Corporation Provident Institution for Savings in the Town of Boston, Trustee and Member of Board of Investment South End Community Development, Inc., Vice-President There were very interesting differences between the two groups. Douglas A. Thom Clinic, Member of the Corporation First, the Philadelphians were richer: whereas Dorrance, the two Haas Thompson Academy, Member of Advisory Board brothers, Annenberg, and McNeil each had personal fortunes of over $200 mil- Trustees of Donations to the Protestant Episcopal Church, Trustee lion, only one Bostonian, Edwin Land, likely reached this level. (Of course, the Trustees of the Sears and Other Funds, Treasurer United Community Services, Member of the Corporation Dorrance, Rosenwald, and Pew families are among the richest in the land.) United South End Settlements, Member of the Corporation Second, the Philadelphia group included far more persons of inherited WGBH Educational Foundation, Treasurer wealth (nine out of ten) than did the Boston list (five out of nine). John F. Con- Wheelock College, Chairman of Board of Trustees nelly was the only genuinely self-made man in the Philadelphia group; he was World Affairs Council, Director born in a poor but proud Irish neighborhood and had to drop out of school in Yale-New Haven Educational Corporation, Director the eighth grade in order to support his widowed mother. Henry S. McNeil in- As might be expected, no contemporary Philadelphians, regardless of class herited the family pharmaceutical business but built his large fortune mainly background, possess John Lowell's energy and sense of duty toward the com- himself. Similarly, Walter Annenberg inherited a fortune from his rather noto- rious father, but multiplied it many times over through his own enterprising munity. ability. Of the Boston group, Maurice Gordon seems to have been the only en- tirely self-made man. Serge Semenke's parents were refugees from the Russian Further insight into the contrasting money mores of Boston and Philadel- Revolution but were able to provide him with a college education; yet, he was phia is supplied by articles on local millionaires published in Philadelphia maga- largely a self-made banker as far as Boston was concerned. Land and Olson zine and in its Boston counterpart called Boston. Measuring someone's wealth is built their own extremely successful companies, though both were of educated a tricky business at best, but Philadelphia listed the ten richest Philadelphians in backgrounds. Although he inherited a successful family business, Sidney Rabb descending order as follows: built Stop & Shop and his own great fortune himself. Charles Francis Adams, whose family had been more engaged in making history than in making John T. Dorrance, Jr. Chairman, Campbell Soup John C. Haas Vice-President, Rohm & Haas money, nevertheless inherited a small fortune; still, he largely built his own F. Otto Haas Chairman, Rohm & Haas while for the most part living on his salary from Raytheon. Walter Annenberg Publisher; former U.S. ambassador to Third, the Bostonians were a better educated group than the Philadelphians. Great Britain Of the ten Philadelphians, only five graduated from college-Dorrance from Henry S. McNeil Built McNeil Laboratories; now largest Princeton, the Haas brothers from Amherst, Pew from MIT, and McNeil from single stockholder in Johnson & John- son, outside Johnson Foundation Yale; although Land left Harvard after his freshman year to pursue his own in- Fitz Eugene Dixon, Jr. Sportsman heir of P. A. B. Widener and tellectual interests, six of the Bostonians graduated from Harvard and one from William L. Elkins, traction magnates MIT. None of the Philadelphians graduated from the University of Pennsylva- John F. Connelly Runs Crown Cork & Seal and nia; although Annenberg went to the Wharton School of Finance and Com- Connelly Containers merce he did not take a degree. Lessing Rosenwald Sears Roebuck heir, retired Walter C. Pew Sun Oil Finally, the tone of Philadelphia and Boston is suggested by comparing the Ella Widener Wetherill Sportswoman and socialite6 richest men from both cities. John T. Dorrance, Jr. inherited a great fortune from his father (some $20,000 a month at the age of eleven). Edwin Land built The Boston article listed nine millionaires, in most cases making no estimate of his own fortune. their total fortunes or listing them in any order of wealth. This rundown suggests that Boston is a far more enterprising city than Phila- delphia; it is also a city in which inherited wealth lasts longer. Thus, none of Edward Kennedy U.S. senator the heirs in the Philadelphia group came from the sample of fifty First Families. Sidney Rabb Builder of Stop & Shop chain Dorrance, the Haas brother, Annenberg, Rosenwald, and McNeil were all men 212 THE NATIONAL EXPERIENCE: COMPARATIVE INSTITUTIONS Wealth: The Fertilizer of Family Trees 213 founder, Joseph Newton Pew. Fitz Eugene Dixon, Jr., was the grandson of two Widener, Wood, Rosengarten, Lennig, Scott, Wanamaker, Cassatt, Converse, of Philadelphia's most fabulous traction kings at the turn of the century, P. A. Baird, Berwind, Dolan, and Pew-are prominent in contemporary Social Regis- Widener and William Lukens Elkins. Ella Widener Wetherill, the youngest of ters in the city, only Enoch W. Clark and Edward Bok had heirs of contempo- the Philadelphia group and probably the wealthiest woman in the city, was a rary distinction: Joseph Sill Clark, reforming mayor and U.S. senator after great-granddaughter of P. A. B. Widener. World War II, and Derek Bok, present president of Harvard. The men of inherited wealth in Boston were a very different breed from their Philadelphia peers. The Kennedys were Boston's first Irish Brahmins and are the most famous First Family in America today. It is significant that Senator FIRST FAMILY MONEY-MAKERS IN Kennedy was the only multimillionaire in the two samples to attain national BOSTON AND PHILADELPHIA elective office, although Walter Annenberg, like the senator's father, was am- bassador to the Court of St. James. Of most significance here, however, is the The men in the First Families samples who were primarily money-makers are fact that three Boston men-a third of the sample-were from families of eight listed in Table A-16. Note that a higher proportion of the Philadelphia sample or nine generations of wealth and civic pride. The Adamses are, of course, was engaged in moneymaking (40 of 146, or 27 percent of the Philadelphians, as America's all-time First Family. Money came into the family initially when against 31 of 187, or 17 percent of the Bostonians). The thirty-one Boston Charles Francis Adams I married the daughter of one of the last merchant money-makers, moreover, formed a much more cohesive group than the forty princes, Peter Chardon Brooks. The Cabots, Proper Boston's biggest clan, have Philadelphians. They came from only sixteen families, all but one-the Ameses been better known for marrying and making money than for producing states- of North Easton, who have always stood somewhat apart-interrelated men or intellectuals: they began their way to real wealth in 1812, when Samuel through business and marriage. The histories of their fortunes (in shipping, in Cabot married the daughter of Boston's greatest merchant prince, Thomas textiles and a few other manufacturing enterprises, in banking and land specu- Handasyd Perkins. Yet Louis W. Cabot, chairman of the Cabot Corporation, lation, and in railroads) thus reveal a clear-cut pattern of continuous economic founded by his grandfather Godfrey Lowell Cabot, had a brilliant record at growth. The Philadelphia group of money-makers was larger and far less coher- Harvard, magna cum laude at the college and cum laude at the business school. ent: the forty Philadelphians came from twenty-five families, or exactly half of Peabodys and Gardners have intermarried down through the years. The inher- the Philadelphia First Families sample. Except in the early years, moreover, ited wealth of George Peabody Gardner, Jr., president and director of Paine, when Shippens, Norrises, Pembertons, Biddles, and Cadwaladers typically in- Webber, Jackson & Curtis, derives from an ancestor, Lowell Gardner, one of termarried, there was less endogamy (especially cousin marriages) than in Bos- the last East Indian merchants, who left some $5 million when he died in 1884. ton, at least among the families that produced DAB subjects. (The family also invested in the Calumet and Hecla mines which we shall dis- This finding leads to another vital difference between the samples: the DAB cuss below.) biographies of the Bostonians, by and large, were complete and to the point; To repeat, if upper-class Philadelphia is richer (there is no exact way of those of the Philadelphians, especially the money-makers, were far less com- knowing) than upper-class Boston, there is more continuity in family fortunes plete and often obscure on important points. Most of the very brief biographies in the latter city. Even more important, the wealth of upper-class Philadelphia of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Quaker merchants, for example, has been augmented in every generation by new men who single-mindedly built said no more about the subject's business career than that he was a "prosperous up huge fortunes but rarely produced descendants of distinction. In Boston, merchant" before going on to tell of his religious interests in, or disaffection however, new men of wealth have been more likely to produce families of ac- from, the Society of Friends and of the offices he may have held in local govern- complishment, such as Cabots, Lowells, Peabodys, Phillipses, Lawrences, and ment. The biography of Francis Rawle (some 600 words) is typical: it tells us Forbeses. An understanding of upper-class wealth in Philadelphia, then, must that Rawle and his father were imprisoned in the notorious Exeter jail in Dev- include such men as I have listed in Table A-15.* Although these individuals onshire (where, as we have seen, Fox and Naylor spent some time); that they made far larger fortunes than all but a few of the money-makers in the Philadel- came to Pennsylvania after receiving a grant of 2,500 acres from Penn; that phia First Families sample, they were largely auslanders and cut-flowers. Of the Rawle was a leader in the antiproprietary party and held a few minor offices in thirty men listed, for instance, only six-William Bingham, E. T. Stotesbury, the city's government; and that he was a merchant (but nothing is said about Peter A. B. Widener, E. J. Berwind, Charles Lennig, and Joseph Harrison, Jr.- where, how, or with whom he traded). In the biography, the phrases "it is said" were native Philadelphians; only David Jayne and Widener had descendants and "it is believed to be" are each used once, and "probably" is used several with those surnames in the DAB. Although fifteen surnames-Clark, Elkins, times. Thus, at the end of the biography, its author writes, "Rawle is said to have been the first person in America to write on political economy." He then All tables cited in this chapter are presented in Appendix I. lists only two pamphlets, one entitled "Ways and Means for the Inhabitants of 218 THE NATIONAL EXPERIENCE: COMPARATIVE INSTITUTIONS Wealth: The Fertilizer of Family Trees 219 was sent up the Columbia River to take possession of the Oregon Territory in Salem merchants usually sailed east, around the Cape of Good Hope, to vari- 1817; his final accomplishment, in 1846, was to negotiate the first treaty be- ous ports in the East Indies. The Derby wharf, stretching out into Salem har- tween the United States and China. James's most famous brother, the banker bor from the foot of Derby Street, was the center of the seafaring life in the Nicholas, is discussed subsequently. town. Elias Hasket Derby ("King Derby," as he was called) was the town's lead- The first moneymakers in the Boston sample were John Phillips (1719-1795) ing East India merchant of his day. He left $1.5 million to his son when he died and his two nephews, William (1750-1825) and Samuel Phillips (1752-1802). in 1799.* John made his fortune in real estate speculation and moneylending at high in- The ethics of the quarterdeck were, as we have noted, important in molding terest. Samuel made a fortune manufacturing gunpowder and supplying the the New England character. "The sea was no wet-nurse to democracy," wrote Revolutionary Army; he also served on the bench and in government but is Morison. "Authority and privilege are her twin foster-children. Instant and un- best remembered as the founder of the first endowed academy in New England, questioning obedience to the master is the rule of the sea; and your typical sea- the Phillips Academy, at Andover. Samuel was a friend of George Washington, captain would make it the rule of the land if he could. "15 And the social struc- who visited him at Andover in 1789 and who sent one nephew and eight ture of Elias Derby's Salem did pretty much mirror the authoritarian mores of grand-nephews to Phillips Academy. Soon after the founding of Andover the sea. But the men who manned the ships of Salem were no seagoing prole- Academy, Samuel's uncle John founded a similar school at Exeter, New Hamp- tariat; there was endless opportunity to rise from the deck to command and shire. And thus began a Boston tradition that combined moneymaking with even ownership. A small Salem brigantine, for instance, once sailed with thir- public service and educational philanthropy. William Phillips, nephew of John teen men aboard, all of whom eventually became masters of their own vessels. and cousin of Samuel, was one of the leading philanthropists and the leading Indeed, many a Boston First Family fortune began with young men who first commercial banker in his generation in Boston. A staunch Federalist, he was went to sea on Elias Derby's ships. One of the more famous was the Astrea, also elected, along with Governor Strong, for eleven successive terms as lieuten- which set sail for China in 1789, carrying young Thomas Handasyd Perkins, ant governor of the state. His political career came to an end in 1823, after a who was to become Boston's foremost merchant prince. term in the Massachusetts Senate. William Phillips was president of the board Thomas Handasyd Perkins's contemporary and friend Peter Chardon at Andover Academy, the sixth in his family to hold this position, and contrib- Brooks, son of the Reverend Edward Brooks (Harvard, class of 1757), set him- uted liberally to the school all his life. When he died, he left money to both the self up as an insurance broker in the Bunch of Grapes Tavern soon after his Andover Academy and the Andover Theological Seminary, in addition to sev- father's death in 1781 which left the family almost destitute. By underwriting eral other institutions largely having to do with the church. vessels and making judicious investments in the East Indian trade, Brooks was Perhaps the most romantic family fortunes in Boston were made by men SO successful that he retired in 1803, at the age of thirty-six, with a comfortable who built ships and sent them out to sea, as Morison showed us in his beautiful fortune. He was perhaps helped on his way to wealth by his marriage to the book on The Maritime History of Massachusetts: "The American Revolution in daughter of wealthy Nathaniel Gorham, one of the four Massachuetts dele- eastern Massachusetts was financed and in part led by wealthy merchants like gates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Brooks, who had thir- John Hancock, Josiah Quincy, James Bowdoin, Richard Derby, and Elbridge teen children with Nancy Gorham, put his wealth to good use in various phi- Gerry."14 And it was men like these, many of whom came to Boston from Sa- lanthropies and in promoting the political ambitions of two sons-in-law, Ed- lem, whose wealth watered the First Family trees. ward Everett and Charles Francis Adams. Salem, in 1790 the sixth largest town in the United States and the first in per Joseph Peabody of Salem founded one of America's greatest families. A suc- capita wealth, was Boston's greatest rival in the contest for Oriental wealth. It cessful privateer during the Revolution, Peabody was the town's leading mer- was also the most Puritan city in Federalist New England. Stephen Higginson chant in the 1830s. And he and his fellow Salem merchants often banked their was of the sixth generation of his family in Salem. The first two generations money with his cousin George Peabody, an Essex County lad who made a for- were Cambridge graduates and clergymen harried out of England by Bishop tune in Baltimore before setting up his famous banking house in London. A Laud's reactionary reforms. The next four generations produced sea captains bachelor, George Peabody left most of his wealth-more than $8 million-to and merchants. Stephen, whose father had married a Cabot, was a very suc- museums and other institutions that now bear his name; his partner and suc- cessful merchant and a staunch Federalist, like his cousin and friend George Cabot (the so-called Federalist sage of Boston); he also was a member of the Continental Congress and took an active part in the military expedition to put *Although the Derbys were not included in the First Families sample, a Hasket Derby was listed in down Shays' Rebellion in Hampshire County. the 1940 Boston Social Register. Whereas Boston dominated the Oriental trade that sailed west around the Nancy Gorham's sister married John Phillips and was the grandmother of the Reverend Phillips Brooks. Peter Chardon Brooks's brother, Cotton Brown Brooks, was the great preacher's other Horn, up along the northwest coast, thence to Canton, and back to Boston, grandfather. 220 THE NATIONAL EXPERIENCE: COMPARATIVE INSTITUTIONS Wealth: The Fertilizer of Family Trees 221 cessor in London, Junius Spencer Morgan, left a son, J. P. Morgan, who was, Waltham. Lowell, with the aid of a mechanical genius named Paul Moody, was among other things, a member of the first board of trustees at Endicott Pea- the brains behind the Boston Manufacturing Company at Waltham, believed body's school at Groton. to be the first mill in the world to combine all the operations of converting raw When Joseph Peabody died in 1844, Salem's great days were over. Two years cotton into finished cloth. Only a few years after the mill's founding, Lowell previously, Nathaniel Hawthorne had married Sophia Peabody and in 1851 died, at the age of forty-two. His money went into the founding of Proper Bos- published The House of Seven Gables, which nicely reflects Salem's decline into ton's famous Lowell Institute, which has supported adult education down shabby gentility. through the years and was one of the original sponsors of Boston's educational television station, WGBH. Patrick Tracy Jackson carried on after his partner's death and founded the Merrimac Manufacturing Company in what is now the city of Lowell. Thus, TEXTILE MANUFACTURING the Manchester of America came into being. Jackson soon found that canal and turnpike transportation was becoming inadequate and he directed the In both England and this country, the textile industry was closely associated building of the Boston & Lowell Railroad. The technical know-how for this with the industrial revolution. But whereas Brahmin Boston was intimately in- venture was supplied by a young engineer named Charles Storer Storrow, who volved in the rise of the textile industry in New England, Proper Philadelphia, graduated first in his class from Harvard and then took a degree in Paris at the with the exception of Tench Cove, seems to have played no major role in tex- Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. tile manufacturing, even though our foremost contemporary business histo- Charles Storrow was descended from a British prisoner-of-war, Captain rian, Thomas Cochran, noted that by 1900 "Pennsylvania would become the Thomas Storrow, who married into Boston Society in 1777. His mother mar- leading textile state. Leadership in the Philadelphia textile industry, then, ried an Appleton and Storrow consolidated his social position by marrying came largely from new men, often auslanders and cut-flowers, who were not into the Jackson family; his wife, Lydia Cabot Jackson, was Patrick Tracy Jack- First Family progenitors. son's niece. Soon after moving to Boston in 1816, Daniel Webster became the champion William, Amos, and Abbott Lawrence came from one of the leading farming of the local shipping interests. He was first elected to Congress as a Federalist families in Groton, Massachusetts. Their father, Samuel, fought at Bunker Hill, advocate of free trade, but he soon developed close associations with the Law- rising to the rank of major during the war, and then settled down in Groton as rences, Lowells, and other mill owners. By the time Webster was elected to the a farmer for the rest of his life. The brothers moved to Boston and made Senate in 1827, he was an aggressive champion of protectionism, and the lead- money in the importing business. They soon became associated with the Lowell ing Whig in Massachusetts. mills, also acting as their sales agents. Eventually, in 1845, Abbott Lawrence Within the Boston sample of fifty families, Henry Lee (1782-1867), a contem- took the lead in founding the city of Lawrence, where the family textile mills porary of Daniel Webster, had been an articulate and thoughtful champion of soon began to rival those at Lowell, which had been built much earlier. Charles federalism and free trade, as well as a leading East India merchant. A year after Storrow helped the Lawrences in building both their mills and their town, be- Webster was sent to the Senate, Lee lost his congressional seat from Boston coming the first mayor when Lawrence, Massachusetts, was incorporated as a to Nathan Appleton, a family founder who built a fortune in textiles. This city in 1853. marked the end of federalism and the rise of the manufacturing Whigs to power The Lawrences were benefactors of many Massachusetts institutions, includ- in the 1830s. ing the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard. Amos Abbott Lawrence, Amos Such pioneers in the Boston area textile industry, as Francis Cabot Lowell, Lawrence's son, led Proper Boston's best back into the Anglican communion Patrick Tracy Jackson, Charles S. Storrow, and the Appleton and Lawrence after the Civil War. His son William became a bishop, founder of a dynasty of brothers made major contributions to Brahmin Boston's wealth and later ac- bishops, and a veritable Boston institution. complishments in the arts and the professions. Nathan Appleton and his brother, Samuel, moved to Boston from their na- The Lowells first became really rich in textiles. Francis Cabot Lowell grad- tive New Hampshire and became very successful shopkeepers. In 1813 they uated from Harvard in 1793 and became a successful merchant in partnership invested $5,000 in the new Lowell mill at Waltham; two years later their firm with his uncle William Cabot. Though he resigned in 1810, when ill health re- became sales agents for the Lowells. They both made fortunes and built them- quired him to take a rest abroad, he used the occasion to make a close study of selves mansions on Beacon Street. Nathan had five children: one son, Thomas textile machinery in Lancashire. Upon Lowell's return to America in 1812, he interested his brother-in-law Patrick Tracy Jackson, who had accumulated *The Lawrences were always strong supporters of Groton Academy (which became Lawrence some money in the East India trade, in building a mill on the Charles River at Academy in 1846, after being handsomely endowed by William and Amos.) 222 THE NATIONAL EXPERIENCE: COMPARATIVE INSTITUTIONS Gold Appleton, was an occasional essayist, member of the Saturday Club, and one of the best talkers and dinner companions in Boston Society. A grandson was also listed in the DAB, presumably for his work as founder and supporter of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. Nathan's wealth, through his daughter, helped one of America's most popular poets, Henry, Wadsworth Longfellow, live in the grand style on Brattle Street in Cam- bridge. Samuel Appleton, who was childless, left a large fortune to the Ameri- can Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Boston Athenaeum, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and Dartmouth, Amherst, and Harvard. Whereas Francis Cabot Lowell and Patrick Tracy Jackson did not establish their first mill until after the War of 1812, as early as 1775 Tench Coxe, nation- alist, economist, publicist, and friend of Alexander Hamilton, was busily en- gaged in promoting cotton manufacturing in Philadelphia. Under his leader- ship, the United Company of Philadelphia for Promoting Manufactures was founded in that year, with Dr. Benjamin Rush as president. This is said to have been the first joint stock company for the manufacture of cotton in America. The industry grew slowly in Philadelphia until 1810, when a young Quaker named Alfred Jenks, who had studied under Samuel Slater in Providence, Rhode Island, established the first regular factory of cotton machinery. By the Civil War, Philadelphia was a thriving textile center. No members of the fifty First Families sample, however, seem to have been industry leaders. Chief among the latter group were John B. Elison, who in 1823 established what be- came John B. Elison & Sons; Samuel Riddle, who founded the Glen Riddle Mills in 1842; and John Bromley, who built one of the great textile fortunes in the city. Two English brothers founded the J. and J. Dobson Company in 1855, and Thomas Dolan founded Thomas Dolan & Company, in 1861, which be- came the Keystone Knitting Mills, the largest in the nation in its day. Although they did not take the lead themselves, a great deal of textile wealth filtered into Philadelphia Society. Jenks, Bromley, Riddle, Dobson, and Dolan surnames, moreover, were prominent in the city's twentieth-century Social Reg. isters. But they were not names associated with education, the arts, or the pro- fessions; nor were they First Family names in any sense of the term. Leadership in the Philadelphia textile industry was indeed atomized as compared to its Bos- ton counterpart. THE PHILADELPHIA-WILMINGTON AREA: CHEMICAL CAPITAL OF THE NATION Solid First Family wealth in Boston came from textiles; Philadelphia First Families such as the Wetherills and the Harrisons made their money in the chemical industry. Samuel Wetherill (1736-1816) came of a long line of leading Quakers who had originally settled in Burlington, New Jersey, in the seventeenth century. He himself was a Quaker minister until the Revolution, when he took the oath of A Historical Overview of Family Firms in the United States Peter Dobkin Hall How do dynastic families adopt to social and economic forces restricting attempts to transmit family wealth from one gener- ation to the next? Writing in the 1850s, the physician and novelist Oliver Wendell Holmes summed up the problems faced by Americans who hoped to pass their firms and fortunes intact to their children and grandchildren: "It is in the nature of large fortunes to diminish rapidly, when subdivided and distributed. A million is the unit of wealth, now and here in America. It splits into four handsome properties; each of these into four good inher- itances; these, again, into scanty competences for four ancient maidens,- with whom it is best that the family should die out, unless it can begin again as its great-grandfather did. Now a million is a kind of golden cheese, which represents in a compendious form the summer's growth of Golden a fat meadow of craft or commerce; and as this kind of meadow rarely these bears more than one crop, it is pretty certain that sons and grandsons will not get another golden cheese out of it, whether they milk the same COWS or turn in new ones. In other words, the millioncracy, considered in a large way, is not at all an affair of persons and families, but a perpetual fact of money with a variable human element" (Holmes, 1961 [1860], pp. 15-16) Holmes knew what he was talking about, for he was heir to two venerable family dynasties. His mother's family, the Wendells of Ports- mouth, New Hampshire, had reaped the "fat meadow of craft and com- merce" of the eighteenth-century West Indies trade. His father's family belonged to New England Brahmin caste of clergymen and scholars. Combining these two dynastic strands in a secular and industrial age, Holmes practiced medicine, taught at Harvard, and wrote for his own amusement. As a healer, he ministered to the bodies and minds of Boston's elite, who were struggling to run, pass on, and inherit family firms and fortunes. He distilled their experiences and distinctive outlook FAMILY BUSINESS REVIEW, VOL. I, NO. 1, SPRING 1988 Pp. 1-68. Gustavus Myers, American Fortunes, vol I, part 1, ch 4 Page 1 of 5 netfirms This site is hosted by Netfirms Web Hosting Ads by Google Subscribe to "Fortune" Earn Money Right Away-Now No Bull Just Cash Easy $1000-$5000 Save 69% off the newsstand price Low Great Mentor. No selling necessary. Get Paid Cash For Filling in Forms Proven home business price subscriptions at MagaZ!ng Networking affiliate CD available. 100% Free No Risk to You Nothing to lose. Everytl www.magazing.com www.MakeMoneyAsPeopleSpend.com goplus.topazfi.com www.time2biz.com HISTORY OF THE GREAT AMERICAN FORTUNES CHAPTER IV THE SHIPPING FORTUNES Thus is was that at the time of the Revolution many of the consequential fortunes were those of shipowners and were principally concentrated in New England. Some of these dealt in merchandise only, while others made large sums of money by exporting fish, tobacco, corn, rice and timber and lading their ships on the return with negro slaves, for which they found a responsive market in the South. Many of the members of the Continental Congress were ship merchants, or inherited their fortunes from rich shippers, as, for instance, Samuel Adams, Robert Morris, Henry Laurens of Charleston, S.C., John Hancock, whose fortune of $350,000 came from his uncle Thomas, Francis Lewis of New York and Joseph Hewes of North Carolina. Others were members of various Constitutional conventions or became high officials in the Federal or State governments. The Revolution disrupted and almost destroyed the colonial shipping, and trade remained stagnant. FORTUNES FROM PRIVATEERING. Not wholly so, for the hazardous venture of privateering offered great returns. George Cabot of Boston was the son of an opulent shipowner. During the Revolution, George, with his brother swept the coast with twenty privateers carrying from sixteen to twenty guns each. For four or five years their booty was rich and heavy, but toward the end of the war, British gun-boats swooped on most of their craft and the brothers lost heavily. George subsequently became a United States Senator. Israel Thorndike, who began life as a cooper's apprentice, and died in 1832 at the age of 75, leaving a fortune, " the greatest that has ever been left in New England," made large sums of money as part owner and commander of a privateer which made many successful cruises. With this money he went into fisheries, foreign commerce and real estate, and later into manufacturing establishments. One of the towering rich men of the http://www.yamaguchy.netfirms.com/myers/am_fortune_04. 2/17/2004 'Gustavus Myers, American Fortunes, vol I, part 1, ch 4 Page 2 of 5 day, we are told that " his investments in real estate, shipping or factories were wonderfully judicious and hundreds watched his movements, believing his pathway was safe." The fortune he bequeathed was ranked as immense. To each of his three sons he left about $500,000 each, and other sums to another son, and to his widow and daughters. In all, the legacies to the surviving members of his family amounted to about $1,800,000.2 Another " distinguished merchant," as he was styled, to take up privateering was Nathaniel Tracy, the son of a Newburyport merchant. College bred, as were most of the sons of rich merchants, he started out at the age of 25 with a number of privateers, and for many years returned flushed with prizes. To quote his appreciative biographer : " He lived in a most magnificent style, having several country seats or large farms with elegant summer houses and fine fish ponds, and all those matters of convenience or taste that a British nobleman might think necessary to his rank and happiness. His horses were of the choicest kind and his coaches of the most splendid make." But alas! this gorgeous career was abruptly dispelled when unfeeling British frigates and gunboats hooked in his saucy privateers and Tracy stood quite ruined. Much more fortunate was Joseph Peabody. As a young man Peabody enlisted as an officer on Derby's privateer " Bunker Hill." His second cruise was on Cabot's privateer " Pilgrim " which captured a richly cargoed British merchantman. Returning to shore he studied for an education, later resuming the privateer deck. Some of his exploits, as narrated by George Atkinson Ward in " Hunt's Lives of American Merchants," published in 1856, were thrilling enough to have found a deserved place in a gory novel. With the money made as his share of the various prizes, he bought a vessel which he commanded himself, and he personally made sundry voyages to Europe and the West Indies. By 1791 he had amassed a large fortune. There was no further need of his going to sea ; he was now a great merchant and could pay others to take charge of his ships. These increased to such an extent that he built in Salem and owned eighty-three ships which he freighted and dispatched to every known part of the world. Seven thousand seamen were in his employ. His vessels were known in Calcutta, Canton, Sumatra, St. Petersburg and dozens of other ports. They came back with cargoes which were distributed by coasting vessels among the various American ports. It was with wonderment that his contemporaries spoke of his paying an aggregate of about $200,000 in State, county and city taxes in Salem, where he lived. 3 He died on Jan. 5, 1844, aged 84 years. Asa Clapp, who at his death in 1848, at the age of 85 years, was credited with being the richest man in Maine, 4 began his career during the Revolution as an officer on a privateer. After the war he commanded various trading vessels, and in 1796 established a shipping business of his own, with headquarters at Portland. His vessels traded with Europe, the East and West Indies and South America. In his later years he went into banking. Of the size of his fortune we http://www.yamaguchy.netfirms.com/myers/am_fortune_04.html 2/17/2004 'Gustavus Myers, American Fortunes, vol I, part 1, ch 4 Page 3 of 5 are left in ignorance. A GLANCE AT OTHER SHIPPING FORTUNES. These are instances of rich men whose original capital came from privateering, which was recognized as a legitimate method of reprisal. As to the inception of the fortunes of other prominent capitalists of the period, few details are extant in the cases of most of them. Of the antecedents and life of Thomas Russell, a Boston shipper, who died in 1796, " supposedly leaving the largest amount of property which up to that time had been accumulated in New England," little is known. The extent of his fortune cannot be learned. Russell was one of the first, after the Revolution, to engage in trade with Russia, and drove many a hard bargain. He built a stately mansion in Charleston and daily traveled to Boston in a coach drawn by four black horses. In business he was inflexible ; trade considerations aside he was an alms-giver. Of Cyrus Butler, another shipowner and trader, who, according to one authority, was probably the richest man in New England 5 - and who, according to the statement of another publication6 - left a fortune estimated at from three to four millions of dollars, few details likewise are known. He was the son of Samuel Butler, a shoemaker who removed froth Edgartown, Mass., to Providence about 1750 and became a merchant and shipowner. Cyrus followed in his steps. When this millionaire died at the age of 82 in 1849, the size of his fortune excited wonderment throughout New England. It may be here noted as a fact worthy of comment that of the group of hale rich shipowners there were few who did not live to be octegenarians. The rapidity with which large fortunes were made was not a riddle. Labor was cheap and unorganized, and the profits of trade were enormous. According to Weeden the customary profits at the close of the eighteenth century on muslins and calicoes were one hundred per cent. Cargoes of coffee sometimes yielded three or four times that amount. Weeden instances one shipment of plain glass tumblers costing less than $1,000 which sold for $12,000 in the Isle of France.7 The prospects of a dazzling fortune, speedily reaped, instigated owners of capital to take the most perilous chances Decayed ships, superficially patched up, were often sent out on the chance that luck and skill would get them through the voyage and yield fortunes. Crew after crew was sacrificed to this frenzied rush for money but nothing was thought of it. Again, there were examples of almost incredible temerity. In his biography of Peter Charndon Brooks, one of the principal merchants of the day, and his father-in-law, Edward Everett tells of a ship sailing from Calcutta to Boston with a youth of nineteen in command. Why or how this boy was placed in charge is not explained. This juvenile captain had nothing in the way of a chart on board except a small map http://www.yamaguchy.netfirms.com/myers/am_fortune_04.htm 2/17/2004 'Gustavus Myers, American Fortunes, vol I, part 1, ch 4 Page 4 of 5 of the world in Guthrie's Geography. He made the trip successfully. Later, when he became a rich Boston banker, the tale of this feat was one of the proud annals of his life and, if true, deservedly so. 8 Whitney's notable invention of the cotton gin in 1793 had given a stupendous impetus to cotton growing in the Southern States. As the shipowners were chiefly centered in New England the export of this staple vastly increased their trade and fortunes. It might be thought, parenthetically, that Whitney himself should have made a surpassing fortune from an invention which brought millions of dollars to planters and traders. But his inventive ability and perseverance, at least in his creation of the cotton gin, brought him little more than a multitude of infringements upon his patent, refusals to pay him, and vexatious and expensive litigation to sustain his rights. In despair, he turned, in 1808, to the manufacture in New Haven of fire-arms for the Government, and from this business managed to get a fortune. From the Canton and Calcutta trade Thomas Handasyd Perkins, a Boston shipper extracted a fortune of $2,000,000. His ships made thirty voyages around the world. This merchant peer lived to the venerable age of 90 when he passed away in 1854 his fortune, although intact, had shrunken to modest proportions compared with a few others which had sprung up. James Lloyd, a partner of Perkins', likewise profited ; in 1808 he was elected a United States Senator and later reälected. William Gray described as "one of the most successful of American merchants," and as one who was considered and taxed in Salem "as one of the wealthiest men in the place, where there were several of the largest fortunes that could be found in the United States," owned, in his heyday more than sixty sail of vessels. Some scant details are obtainable as to the career and personality of this moneyed colossus of his day. He began as an apprenticed mechanic. For more than fifty years he rose at dawn and was shaved and dressed. His letters and papers were then spread before him and the day's business was begun. At his death in 1825 no inventory of his estate was taken. The present millions of the Brown fortune of Rhode Island came largely from the trading activities of Nicholas Brown and the accretions of which increased population and values have brought. Nicholas Brown was born in Providence in 1760, of a well-to-do father. He went to Rhode Island College (later named in his honor by reason of his gifts) and greatly increased his fortune in the shipping trade. It is quite needless, however, to give further instances in support of the statement that nearly all the large active fortunes of the latter part of the eighteenth and the early period of the nineteenth century, came from the shipping trade and were mainly concentrated in New England. The proceeds of these fortunes frequently were put into factories, canals, turnpikes and later into railroads, telegraph lines and express companies. Seldom, however, has the money thus employed really gone to the descendants of the men who amassed http://www.yamaguchy.netfirms.com/myers/am_fortune_04.htm 2/17/2004 Gustavus Myers, American Fortunes, vol I, part 1, ch 4 Page 5 of 5 it, but has since passed over to men who by superior cunning, have contrived to get the wealth into their own hands. This statement is an anticipation of facts that will be more cognate in subsequent chapters, but may be appropriately referred to here. There were some exceptions to the general condition of the large fortunes from shipping being compactly held in New England. Thomas Pym Cope, a Philadelphia Quaker, did a brisk shipping trade, and founded the first regular line of packets between Philadelphia and Baltimore ; with the money thus made he went into canal and railroad enterprises. And in New York and other ports there were a number of shippers who made fortunes of several millions each. THE WORKERS' MEAGER SHARE. Obviously these millionaires created nothing except the enterprise of distributing products made by the toil and skill of millions of workers the world over. But while the workers made these products their sole share was meager wages, barely sufficient to sustain the ordinary demands of life. Moreover, the workers of one country were compelled to pay exorbitant prices for the goods turned out by the workers of other countries. The shippers who stood as middlemen between the workers of the different countries reaped the great rewards. Nevertheless, it should not be overlooked that the shippers played their distinct and useful part in their time and age, the spirit of which was intensely ultra-competitive and individualistic in the most sordid sense. 1 "Hunt's Merchant's Magazine," II:516-517. 2 Allen's "Biographical Dictionary," Edition of 1857:791. 3 Hunt's "Lives of American Merchants": 382. 4 Allen's "Biographical Dictionary," Edit. of 1857:227. 5 Stryker's "American Register" for 1849:241. 6 " The American Almanac " for 1850: 324. 7 "An Economic and Social History of New England," II:825. 8 Hunt's " Lives of American Merchants " : 139. 9 Life of Eli Whitney, "Our Great Benefactors " : 567. http://www.yamaguchy.netfirms.com/myers/am_fortune_04.htn 2/17/2004 OXFORD JOURNALS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Did Fortunes Rise and Fall Mercurially in Antebellum America? The Tale of Two Cities: Boston and New York Author(s): Edward Pessen Source: Journal of Social History, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Summer, 1971), pp. 339-357 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3786475 Accessed: 14-11-2017 14:43 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers. and students discover. use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR. please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Social History JSTOR This content downloaded from 137.49.121.50 on Tue, 14 Nov 2017 14:43:48 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Building Boston's Back Bay: Marriage of Money and Hygiene Allan S. Galper The filling of the Back Bay in Boston was perhaps the greatest achievement in American city planning in the nineteenth century.¹ The residential area created by this ambitious urban design project boasts the most complete display of American architecture from the second half of the nineteenth century that still stands today. 2 Much can be learned not only from the district's architecture but from the way in which the waters of the Back Bay were transformed into lots of solid land suitable for houses. Despite some setbacks, this process was a paradigm of joint civic effort on the parts of the state, the city, and private interests. Although the unifying factor may have been maximization of financial profits, a sincere desire to improve the physical and intellectual health of the city brought these disparate interests together as well. These motives dictated a very specific type of plan, which was accompanied by a particular form of 1. Bainbridge Bunting, Houses of Boston's Back Bay: An Architectural History, 1840-1917 (Cambridge, 1967), p. 2; Bainbridge Bunting, "The Plan of the Back Bay Area in Boston," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, XIII (1954): 19-24; Lewis Mumford, Back Bay Boston: The City as a Work of Art (Boston, 1969), pp. 18-35. 2. Walter Muir Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History (Cambridge, 1968), p. 235. - 61 Westfield Historical Journal of Massachusetts founded 1855 Allan Gapler, "Building Boston's Back Bay: Marriage of Money and Hygiene" Historical Journal of Massachusetts Volume 23, No. 1 (Winter 1995). Published by: Institute for Massachusetts Studies and Westfield State University You may use content in this archive for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the Historical Journal of Massachusetts regarding any further use of this work: masshistoryjournal@westfield.ma.edu Funding for digitization of issues was provided through a generous grant from MassHumanities. massHUMANITIES Some digitized versions of the articles have been reformatted from their original, published appearance. When citing, please give the original print source (volume/number/ date) but add "retrieved from HJM's online archive at http://www.westfield.ma.edu/mhj/." HIM 974.461 H328 Money, Morals, and Politics 2 MASSACHUSETTS IN THE AGE OF THE BOSTON ASSOCIATES William F. Hartford 2001 Northeastern University Press BOSTON 8/25/2021 The Boston Associates - Charles River Museum The Boston Associates An introduction to our permanent exhibit on The Boston Associates, founders of the site we, the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation, now call our home. THE ROSTON SSOCIATES America's First Industrial Dynasty 1. Profit and Paternalism: The Boston Associates and the Development of New England's Textile Industry and Ecosystem (1813-1860) In 1934, historian Vera Shlakman coined the term FRANCIS CABOT LOWELL "Boston Associates." She discovered that a small group (SILHOUETTE), PATRICK TRACY of investors from Boston were critical to the larger JACKSON, AND NATHAN APPLETON, AND THE BOSTON MANUFACTURING industrial development of New England. This group, COMPANY connected by social and blood ties, consolidated wealth and dominated the American textile industry during the first half of the nineteenth century. This exhibit explores the technological innovations, new business strategies, and shared ideals that characterized the Boston Associates, beginning with https://www.charlesrivermuseum.org/the-boston-associates 2/5 8/25/2021 The Boston Associates - Charles River Museum Francis Cabot Lowell and the Boston Manufacturing Company in 1813. As absentee owners, they not only ruled the industrial life in places like Waltham, Lowell, Lawrence, Manchester, and Saco; they also contributed to the economic growth of these once-small villages. Men like Patrick Tracy Jackson, Francis Cabot Lowell and Nathan Appleton were linked together not only because they had made it to the top of Boston's elite, but because they wanted to make sure that industrial growth did not run amok-that it was restrained by traditional values of community, hard work, social obligation, and decency. 2. The First Fully Integrated Factory, 1815 The Boston Manufacturing Company mechanized the entire process of cotton production, from bale to bolt in one building, combining large capital resources with key technological innovations. Travel back 200 years and encounter a world on the brink of fundamental change, a change from farm to factory, from home production to mass production. The world-altering effects of the evolving Waltham-Lowell System might be reasonably compared to the Wright brothers' breakthrough of powered human flight nearly a century later. 3. What you will discover The Boston Associates - ... A challenge to conventional views of free-market capitalism. The Boston Associates rejected profit at all costs and pioneered a blend of https://www.charlesrivermuseum.org/the-boston-associates 3/5 8/25/2021 The Boston Associates - Charles River Museum ENJOY THIS 11-MINUTE FILM INTRODUCING THE BOSTON corporate acquisition with corporate ASSOCIATES, CREATED BY FILMMAKER MICHAEL BAVARO responsibility. An integrated narrative, linking topical panels together - on technology, economics, politics, and culture. Whether covering people, practices, places, or things, a continuous thread runs through all panels, creating a meta- narrative for the visitor-a near-complete overview of New England's textile industry over a nearly 50-year period. A Past Imperfect A heroic tale: The Boston Associates made it possible for this country to break free economically from England, and in turn, rise to prominence as a powerful competitor with other nation states. Heroic fallibility Industrial growth was not unequivocally positive-many farmers and undercapitalized merchants were displaced by this business syndicate. The Boston Associates proved both generous and self-serving, the latter leading to some neglectful, and immoral practices, including support of slavery. We must not only celebrate these great venture capitalists of the past but provide a complex view of humanity and its imperfections. f https://www.charlesrivermuseum.org/the-boston-associates 4/5 Page lof4. do NATIONAL Apportant documents supporting Mr. Dorris lotter of Londo belonging to the Lancock County Trustees everticao to the Department of the Interior is contained 02 Paya Service Archives file #601, Part 1, Accdic June 6, 1914 to July 14, 1925: Colting from Frenk Bond, Chief, Clerk, General Load Office opinion on whether the deeds submitted were in TO- D.C., dated June 6, 1914, to the Chief Lew Clerk, June 8, 1906, entitled "An Act for the Preservation of of by the United States undor the provisions proper : Lend of opinion from the Chief Law Clerk, Mr. Pugh, Office which COVONS mony minor details. Office to Mr. Bond, the Chief Clark of the 26, 3914. from Chiez Clark, Mr. Bond, to Mr. George B. Dorr also steban that 17 certain minor objections are This letter includes comments on the above potence of the deeds under the set of 1905. so objection will be reised by the General Lond Office over- Cottor the from Million C. Redfield, Secretary, Department of condicilly in compathy with hic purposes which I commend President. dated May 2, 1916. "I know the locality thought. Sengthy paper upon, "The Need for Public Recervations Cadeys Island, by George B. Door. written with reference to conservation plans for Procervation Depart Society, New York, concerning proposed and 2220 18th Annual Report, 1913, of the American Scenic Divido Accordation. Island, Maine, Submitted to the President national by the Sectures 02 the open. Survey dated May 2, 1916, outlining the outstanding by David White, Chief Geologist, United States Activel Corvert Recervation, by M. I. Ferneld, Cheirmon, Department Island Distagont entitled, "The Importance of Mt. Deport Groy Boverten, Eneward University, dated December 5, University, President of the New England Botanical I - 2 2 For promoting observational and experimental studies native life, marine as well as lend, migratory or Sent, cancel or insect, and publishing reports thereon. 202 the experimental introduction and trial and ON- pleabe from other regions. For the publication of any material, descriptive, or Motorical that will increase the interest to of the Acadion region, its life and landscapes, and ocean." Sozdens of Acadie joined together with Mr. Dorr and the Spring Company in donoting the Sieur de Monts Spring Another important piece of property was densted the Wild Gardens of Acedia was the land on which the at the headquarters area are located. difection of a number of scientific articles concerning the of the Park was made possible through the financial the wild Cardons of Acadia Corporation. Compenation is not now active although it has not been formally Itc lost meeting was held about five years ago when they White lost holdings. Constions precticable for the purposes of this report to even try noses of all the individuals who made donations of land for whother directly to the Secretary of the Interior, or through such as the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reser- Only c. very brief account of the major donations subsequent clement of Sieur de Monts National Monument will be made. Peninsula. This donation has been adequately covered in on the establishment of Acadia. This area is shown on the graphic nep in the Appendix. Donations. The largest single contributor, both of has been John D. Rockefeller, Jr. His earliest done- adde through the Liancock County Trustees of Public Recer- the great bulk of them have come as direct gifts to the the Interior. No HOP at present is available of Rocke- motions but perhaps one can be obtained and added to this laber date. B. Dorr Donotions. Mr. Dorris contributions in establishing Accdic can not all be listed here. The following ex- the "Eerrings before the Subconmittee of the Committee on 26 3. House of Representatives, 77th Congress, 1st Session Department Accrepriction Bill for 1942, part 1," no gave OF his resources to make the park Mr. Demoroy, will you make 2. statement regarding the acquisition of land and improvements proposed at Acadic National Park? This is the George B. Dorr case. I have here a letter written by Mr. Dorr, covering several pages, in which he presents the situation, and Mr. Demaray can probably express it in a much more concise way. You gentlemen all remember that Mr. Dorr is the man who, through bis own efforts and through his own funds, has nade the Acadic National Park possible, through gifts from interested citicous. Mr. Dorr. hincelf. has already contributed to the volue of et least $100,000 and Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., has contributed at least $2,500,000. Mr. Dorr is a non 87 years old. He is neering the end of his open of life and be is embitious to leave the rest of his properties to the Park and to make them a part of Acedic National Park. Last year he wrote the President offering to give the home which his mother and father and himself built at Box Farbor to the Chief Executive, possibly, for possible use as a summer home for the Chica Executive. The President reolied and I believe there is a copy of the President's reply which Mr. Dorr sent you Yes. ....in which be said that the Chief Executive had no authority to accept this land, but suggested that he give it to the Secretary of the Interior as part of Acadie National Park and that he could express the desire that he night have in mind for this property. Now Mr. Dorr has been unfortunate in his investments and carter be made the offer to the President his financial offeirs became involved. At the present time there is outstanding indobtedness of about $25,000 which is held by the bank and be has been trying to find ways and means by which he could clear this so that he could carry out his wich. Mr. Dorr owns another piece of land on which at the time the Park was first established he DUT IC the Park office. This (indicating on man) is night in the town of Bar Harbor and this (findicating) is the present Park office. 27 4. This (indicating) is the information office, two garages, and a cerements alton. I have outlined in DONOR ARIS area which be owns. The Park acquired this piece of adjoining property (indicating) and with the CCC has built on equipment and storage sind which ex- stendo 2 little on his land. Mr. Dorr, in the letter that he wrote to Mr. Taylor as a minn necring the span of his lifc, and wanting to clear his property, in order to cerry his expressed desires, has suggested that he would sell the Bar Earbor property for which HT not may $15.00 annually for rental, for $37,500. That would permit him to clear un his in- debrediness on his other londo; and this (indicating on man) is the other land which he wents to donate to the United States." old Term property which Mr. Dorr was offering as a gift, was ozcess of $250,000 and the property on Bar Verbor on which codquerters now rects yac considered to be worth in excess of t 500 for which he was asking, therefore, Congress readily passed (Public Low 136, 77th Congress, entitled "Act making appro- for the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year ending and for other purposes;, approved June 28, 1941.). to account of the acquisition of this tract is included mainly OF its location on a soparato island come 15 miles southeast Deport Island. nomorendum for the files, dated February 4, 1942, Mr. Earry I. Chief of the Lando Division, records: "Mr. R. L. Bowditch called this office today and re- masted information concerning the possibility of the by this Department of e. donation of some 13,000 nezes of land owned by him on Iole Au Heut in Knox County, Taino for addition to the Acadis National Farir. "Bir. Bowditch Has informed that while legal authority for accoptance of the donation exists, his proposal would first are to be considered by administrative officers from 3 planning stondpoint Mar. Senders made a further notation 32 follows: Bowditch called at this office again on February 19 the processed donation was discussed in SOME detail with Vint and Mr. George Collins. Dir. Vint indicated that in opinion this land would be a desirable addition to the Mr. Bowditch stated that the title to the property in corporation owned and controlled by him and hic TWO sisters of when, e physician, is now in England) and that be would 28 BOX 2 Tax List - George B. Dorr, Town of Bar Harbor: Compass Harbor $11,300.00 - Goot Old Farm Property 38,905.00 Storm Beach and Hill 6,550.00 Lot Southwest of Pike 540.00 Land between Otter Creek and Schooner Head Road $2,780.00 Land West Ledgelawn Ave. Extension-South of Cemetery 880.00 Land North of Kebo--West of Cemetery 420.00 Strawberry Hill Lot 750.00 Land at Otter Creek 355.00 Alvah Abbott and Stover Lots 740.00 Land South Cromwell Harbor Road 1,700.00 Goot? Roberts Lot (Where is it?) 300.00 Hatfield Lot 2,025.00 Salisbury Cove Lot 300.00 $67,545.00 BAR HARBOR Town OFFICE 1873 CHAS Dore 81 ALRES CROMOUNU HARBOR 800 TAX 190 / INVENTORY & VALUATION ALRES TAX DORR GEO. B. No. PORTION OF COT FORMERLY ouner BY 27 398x25 JOHN CONNORS 1200 COTTACE ON SAME 1500 STABLE is 4 500 FARM HOUSE u - 200 SURNS - LT is 200 DOVOLASS is a 100 ICE HOUSE 4 " 100 is LAUNDRY 25 SHED 7 - 75 c. c SOAT HOUSE 500 GREENHOUSE & COTTACE 2500 NEW is 4 100 new STABLE 400 COLD STORACE BLOG 20. PORTION OF LOT FORMERLY. OURED BY John CORMORS inclusing GRANITEQUANAY 114 5415 Guaney BLOGS. on SAME 200 LOT LYING BETWEEN OTTER CREEK t SCHOOLER HEAD 5 1200 ROADS LOT BOUNDED NORTH sy OTTER (REDI ROAD NE, SE + sw BY LAND OF SELF 2 200 LOT BOUGHT OF w. . M. ROBERTS BOLLOED NW 57 OTTER CREEK Rs. NW sy LAND on SELF SE BY SUTTONER HEAD Ro, Sw BY 6 % 340 CAROOF W. M. ROBERTS RELORDED INH.R. OF D. VOL. 28607 250 HOUSE ON NEWPORT MT ROAD BLOG ON MAINST. BETWEEN BUNKER BLOCK & STEPENS LAND ON LAND OF T.C. ROBERTS 1000 STABLE ON LAST DESCRIBED LOT 100 66780 MONEY AT INTEREST CARRIACES in EXCESS OF DEBIS 10 500 Cows HORSES 5000 2 50 8 400 MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS HOUSEHOLD innine in EXCESS OF 415 in EXCESS OF TOTAL VALUATION TO TAC / 150 $200 OF PERSONAL ESTATE 68380 500 1600 Page 1 of 2 Epp, Ronald From: Epp, Ronald Sent: Friday, December 02, 2005 10:05 AM To: warner_m@jud.state.ma.us Marnie Warner, Lawhibran Subject: NELINET, Ron Epp & Dorr Research Coordinator Mass Trial Court how Lubraries, Boston, Dear Marnie, 617.878-0338 MA. 02108 First off, I've heard back from Florentine Films that my NELINET Award invitation will be passed along to Ken Burns. Regarding our sidewalk conversation on my research challenges in unearthing the inheritance issue of the subject of the biography that I am now writing, let me outline the particulars. George Bucknam Dorr (1853-1944) is widely recognized as the Founder and first Superintendent of Acadia National Park. Much of the Mount Desert Island (ME) land gifted to the United States he purchased directly or as an intermediary. Secondary sources attribute to him an inheritance in 1901 or 1902 of anywhere from one to ten million dollars following the death of his mother. I am trying to validate that claim, to track the money. Mr. Dorr was the son of Charles Hazen Dorr (1821-1893) and Mary Gray Ward Dorr (1820-1901) who resided since 1863 at 18 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston. Both the Ward and Dorr families were prominent and socially connected families with Brahmin associations since many family members on both sides were Harvard College graduates. George B. Dorr graduated from Harvard, class of 1874. It appears that family wealth came primarily from his maternal family on the death in 1858 of Thomas Wren Ward of 3 Park Street, Boston, the American agent for the Baring Brothers Banking empire. The family also had a summer "cottage" called Old Farm in Bar Harbor, ME. which was built in 1881 at a cost of $70,000, a not modest sum for that era. Mr. George B. Dorr retained the 18 Commonwealth Avenue residence for at least twenty years following his mother's death in 1901. How might I determine when this property transferred to another owner? I have seen the probated will on file in Hancock County ME (Ellsworth Maine) following the death of Mr. Dorr's father, January 28, 1893. A family friend named Charles Pickering Bowditch was the executor/sole trustee who is empowered to dispose of his real estate and to whom is given "all my personal effects, apparel, furniture, ornaments, works of art, books in a will dated July 11, 1891. No mention or provision is made for his wife or his son! Would it have been customary for the era to have such an arrangement whereby Mr. Bowditch was implicitly the intermediary to transfer these assets to his wife and son? This will was also probated in Suffolk County. On the death of Mary Gray Ward Dorr on October 21, 1901 her Suffolk County will dated April 20, 1897 was probated on March 5, 1893 by Elijah George, Register of the Suffolk County probate Court. She bequeaths to her sole surviving son "all my estate real and personal and I appoint to him all property over which I may have any power of testamentary appointment." For both these documents there is no estate inventory or appraisal of worth. Is it possible to uncover this information? Any assistance that you could provide would be very much appreciated and subsequently acknowledged. Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you. Ron Ronald H. Epp Ph.D. University Library Director & Associate Professor of Philosophy Southern New Hampshire University 12/2/2005 Certificate No. 9 =10=5hares. Commentreath Capital, $50,000. 500 Shares. Land No. 2 NOT SUBJECT TO Avenue ASSESSMENT. of Botton Trush This Certifies, That George B. Doff is the holder of - I on Shares in the No. 2 COMMONWEALTH AVENUE LAND TRUST, which he holds according to the terms of a Declaration of Trust made by Henry Parkman, A. R. Whittier and Francis Peabody, Jr. dated December 23rd, 1895, recorded in Suffolk County Registry of Deeds. This certificate is transferable only on the books of the Trustees by the owner in person or by his attorney upon the surrender of this certificate. In Witness Where of, The Trustees of said Land Trust, or a majority of them, hereunto set their hands at Boston, Mass., this Firit day of april A. D. 1896 Mortgage for closed Helen Parkina and shorthing left for stort holders Trustees. acca doing to as (isability us (200) water shp H vyop.vq Boston Manufacturing Company - Wikipedia Page 1 of 5 Coordinates: 42°22'23"N 71°14'9"W WIKIPEDIA Boston Manufacturing Company Boston Manufacturing Company U.S. National Register of Historic Places U.S. National Historic Landmark District Boston Manufacturing Company, Waltham, Massachusetts Show map of Massachusetts Show map of the United States Show all Location 144-190 Moody St., Waltham, Massachusetts Coordinates 42°22'23"N 71°14'9"W Built 1813 Architect Paul Moody NRHP reference # 77001412 (https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/77001412) Significant dates Added to NRHP December 22, 1977(1) Designated NHLD December 22, 1977(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Manufacturing_Company 8/9/2019 Boston Manufacturing Company - Wikipedia Page 2 of 5 The Boston Manufacturing Company was a business that operated the first factory in America. It was organized in 1813 by Francis Cabot Lowell, a wealthy Boston merchant, in partnership a group of investors known as The Boston Associates, for the manufacture of cotton textiles. It built the first integrated spinning and weaving factory in the world at Waltham, Massachusetts, using water power. They used plans for a power loom that he smuggled out of England as well as trade secrets from the earlier horse-powered Beverly Cotton Manufactory, of Beverly, Massachusetts, of 1788. [3] This was the largest factory in the U.S., with a workforce of about 300. It was a very efficient, highly profitable mill that, with the aid of the Tariff of 1816, competed effectively with British textiles at a time when many smaller operations were being forced out of business. While the Rhode Island System that followed was famously employed by Samuel Slater, the Boston Associates improved upon it with the "Waltham System". The idea was successfully copied at Lowell, Massachusetts and elsewhere in New England. Many rural towns now had their own textile mills. Contents Origins Revolution The Waltham System See also References Further reading External links Origins Since 1793, when Samuel Slater established the first water-powered successful textile spinning mill in America at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, water power had been operating machinery to process cotton fiber into yarn, which would then be outsourced to small weaving shops and private homes where it would be woven into cloth on hand-operated looms. By 1810, dozens of spinning mills dotted the New England countryside. However, cloth production was still fairly slow with this system. While on a visit to Lancashire, England in 1810, [5] Francis Cabot Lowell studied the workings of the successful British textile industry. He paid particular attention to the power loom, a device for which there was yet no equal in America. He knew that increased cloth production in the United States depended on such a machine. Upon his return trip to Boston in 1812, he committed the plans to memory, disguising himself as a country farmer, since the British banned export of the new technology at the time. [6] In September 1813 The Boston Associates purchased the Boies Paper Mill site in Waltham. With a ten-foot drop in the nearby Charles River, it was an ideal location to establish the new factory they envisioned. Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Manufacturing_Company 8/9/2019 Boston Manufacturing Company - Wikipedia Page 3 of 5 The group hired a skilled mechanic named Paul Moody of Amesbury to develop and construct the machinery and to supervise the construction of the new mill. After over a year of trials, Moody was able to bring Lowell's description of the power loom to fruition, making his own advancements along the way. It would be the perfection of Moody's power loom that would be the real "revolution" in American industry. For the first time, all phases of cloth production could be brought under one roof. Moody also developed a system of power Boston Manufacturing Company, C. transmission using a series of leather belts and pulleys powered by 1813 water turbines, that would prove much more efficient than the shaft and gear system then in use. The first mill was completed in late 1814, after almost a year of construction. Jacob Perkins was in charge of installing the first waterwheel, dam, flumes and raceway. By early 1815, the cloth was sold. Production expanded quickly, as did profits. In 1816 a second larger mill was built next to the first mill. In addition to producing cloth, it also produced textile machinery for other companies. The two mills were later connected in 1843, as part of a planned expansion. [7] The power loom was soon copied by many other New England area mills, and modified and perfected along the way. Francis Cabot Lowell died in 1817, at age 42. Boston Manufacturing Company and Dam in August, 2011 The Waltham System The Boston Associates attempted to create a well-controlled system of labor which varied from the harsh conditions observed while in Lancashire. The mill owners recruited young Yankee farm girls from the surrounding area to come work the machines at Waltham. The mill girls, as they came to be known, lived in boarding houses provided by the company and were supervised by older women, and were subject to strict codes of conduct. They worked approximately eighty hours per week. The workers would wake to the factory bell at 4:40 in the morning. They would report to work Boston Manufacturing Company at 5:00 and have a half-hour breakfast break at 7:00 a.m. They (1978), HAER-54 would then work until the half-hour- to forty-five-minute lunch break at noon. At 7:00 p.m. the factory would shut down and the workers would return to their company houses. This routine was followed six days a week. This system became known as the Waltham System. [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Manufacturing_Company 8/9/2019 Boston Manufacturing Company - Wikipedia Page 4 of 5 By the early 1820s the water power of the Charles River at Waltham was just about maximized, and the investors sought a new location to build even more mills. As the Merrimack Manufacturing Company, in 1822 they copied the Waltham System at the new city of Lowell, Massachusetts on a much larger scale. The same group of investors would later establish Lawrence, Massachusetts, Manchester, New Hampshire and several other new industrial centers throughout New England during the first half of the 19th century. The factory methods introduced at Waltham would also be copied by other industries in the years to follow. The Waltham site would be expanded again during the late 19th century. The original mills were connected, the gable roofs removed, and additional floors were added with flat roofs. The Boston Manufacturing Company closed in 1930. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1977. (2][9] Some of the company's worker housing has also been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Today, the site is occupied by the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation, United States Department of Housing and Urban Development-subsidized housing for seniors, the Ira B. Gordon Center For the Arts (part of the Waltham Mills Artists Association), [10] and other housing. See also Lowell Mill Girls Lowell Mills List of National Historic Landmarks in Massachusetts National Register of Historic Places listings in Waltham, Massachusetts References 1. "National Register Information System" '(http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natreg/docs/All_Data.html)., National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2007-01-23. 2 "Boston Manufacturing Company"(https://web.archive.org/web/20090606005954/http://tps.cr.nps.gov/nhl/detail.cfm? Resourceld=1734&ResourceType=District). National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Archived from the original (http://tps.cr.nps.gov/nhl/detail.cfm? Resourceld=1734&ResourceType=District) on 2009-06-06. Retrieved 2008-07-15. 3. Robert W Lovett, "The Beverly Cotton Manufactory: Or some new light on an early cotton mill Bulletin of the Business Historical Society pre ( Dec 1952) 26, 000004; ABI/INFORM(pg. 218) 4. Kenton Beerman, "The Beginning of a Revolution: Waltham and the Boston Manufacturing Company." The Concord Review (1994) online (http://teachers.hfcsd.org/webpages/tnassivera/files/the% 20beginning%20of%20a%20revolution.pdf). 5. Who Made America(https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/lowell_hi.html 6. PDF of Economic Decision-Making: Francis Cabot Lowell http://www.economicadventure.org/decision/lowell.pdf)Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20090824025404/http://www.economicadventure.org/decision/lowell.pdf) August 24, 2009, at the Wayback Machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Manufacturing_Company 8/9/2019 Boston Manufacturing Company - Wikipedia Page 5 of 5 7. George R. Adams; Candace Jenkins; Mike Folsom; Donald C. Jackson (1984). "Boston Manufacturing Company MA-54" (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage? collld=pphhdatapage&fileName=ma/ma0900/ma0972/data/hhdatapage.db&recNum=1&itemLink=D? h:18:/temp/~pp_VpCJ::). Historic American Engineering Record. Historic American Engineering Record. Retrieved 2008-07-15. 8. Local History Pages (http://www.walthammuseum.com/250-history-08.html) 9. George R. Adams(?) (1977(?)) "National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Boston Manufacturing Company"(https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NHLS/77001412_text) (pdf). National Park Service. Check date values in: date= (help) A National Register of Historic Places Inventory- Nomination document is available upon request from the National Park Service for this site, and should be online but there is an error at the NPS Focus server for this document. However, available are the Accompanying six photos, exterior and interior, from 1977 https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NHLS/77001412_photos) (32 KB) 10. http://www.wmaastudios.org Further reading Bergquist Jr, H. E. "The Boston Manufacturing Company and Anglo-American Relations 1807-1820." Business History 15.1 (1973): 45-55. Dalzell, Robert F. Enterprising elite: The Boston Associates and the world they made (1987). Prince, Carl E., and Seth Taylor. "Daniel Webster, the Boston Associates, and the US Government's Role in the Industrializing Process, 1815-1830." Journal of the Early Republic 2.3 (1982): 283-299. External links The Beginning of a Revolution: Waltham and the Boston Manufacturing Company (https://web.archive.org/web/20120508063928/http://www.tcr.org/tcr/essays/CB_Textiles.pdf).By Kenton Beerman. 1994. The Concord Review Boston Manufacturing Company, 144-190 Moody Street, Waltham, Middlesex County, MA: 70 photos, 15 data pages (http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/hhh.ma0972), at Historic American Engineering Record Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation (http://www.charlesrivermuseum.org) Boston Manufacturing Company records(http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HBS.Baker.EAD:bak00043) at Baker Library Special Collections, Harvard Business School David Stephen Unger, "A Place of Work: The Geography of an Early Nineteenth Century Machine Shop" (Harvard Dissertation 2013)[1] https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/11095960/unger_gsas.harvard_0084l_10950.pdf Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? title=Boston_Manufacturing_Company&oldid=889722019" This page was last edited on 27 March 2019, at 14:40 (UTC). Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Manufacturing_Company 8/9/2019 Waltham-Lowell system - Wikipedia Page 1 of 4 WIKIPEDIA Waltham-Lowell system The Waltham-Lowell system was a labor and production model employed during the rise of the textile industry in the United States, particularly in New England, amid the larger backdrop of rapid expansion of the Industrial Revolution the early 19th century. Made possible by inventions such as the spinning jenny, spinning mule, and water frame around the time of the American Revolution, the textile industry was among the earliest mechanized industries, and models of production and labor sources were first explored here. Boston Manufacturing Co., The system used domestic labor, often referred to as mill girls, who Waltham, Massachusetts came to the new textile centers from rural towns to earn more money than they could at home, and to live a cultured life in "the city". Their life was very regimented - they lived in company boardinghouses and were held to strict hours and a moral code. As competition grew in the domestic textile industry and wages declined, strikes began to occur, and with the introduction of cheaper imported foreign workers by mid-century, the system proved unprofitable and collapsed. Contents Precursor Characteristics Waltham Lowell Decline See also References Notes External links Precursor The precursor to the Waltham-Lowell system was seen in Rhode Island, where British immigrant Samuel Slater set up his first spinning mills in the 1790s. Slater drew on his British village experience to create a factory system called the "Rhode Island System," based on the customary patterns of family life in New England villages. Children aged 7 to 12 were the first employees of the mill; Slater personally supervised them closely. The first child workers were hired in 1790. It is highly unlikely that Slater resorted to physical punishment, relying on a system of fines. Slater first tried to staff his mill with women https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltham-Lowell_syster 8/9/2019 Waltham-Lowell system - Wikipedia Page 2 of 4 and children from afar, but that fell through due to the close-knit framework of the New England family. He then brought in whole families, creating entire towns. [1] He provided company-owned housing nearby, along with company stores; he sponsored a Sunday School where college students taught the children reading and writing. Characteristics The Waltham-Lowell system pioneered the use of a vertically integrated system. [2] Here there was complete control over all Slater Mill aspects of production. Spinning, weaving, dyeing, and cutting were now completed in a single plant. [3] This large amount of control made it SO that no other company could interfere with production. The Waltham mill also pioneered the process of mass production. This greatly increased the scale of manufacturing. Water powered line shafts and belts now connected hundreds of power lines. The increase in manufacturing occurred SO rapidly that there was no localized labor supply in the early 19th century that could have sufficed. [4] Lowell solved this problem by hiring young women. Waltham After the successes of Samuel Slater, a group of investors now called The Boston Associates and led by Newburyport, Massachusetts merchant Francis Cabot Lowell devised a new textile operation on the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts, west of Boston. This new firm, the first in the nation to place cotton-to-cloth production under one roof, was incorporated as the Boston Manufacturing Company in 1814. The Boston Associates tried to create a controlled system of labor unlike the harsh conditions they observed while in Lancashire, England. The owners recruited young New England farm girls from the surrounding area to work the machines at Waltham. The mill girls lived in company boarding houses and were subject to strict codes of conduct and supervised by older women. They worked about 80 hours per week. Six days per week, they woke to the factory bell at 4:40am and reported to work at 5am and had a half-hour breakfast break at 7am They worked until a lunch break of 30 to 45 minutes around noon. The workers returned to their company houses at 7pm when the factory closed. This system became known as the Waltham System. Lowell While the Boston Manufacturing Company proved immensely profitable, the Charles River had very little potential as a power source. Francis Cabot Lowell died prematurely in 1817, and soon his partners traveled north of Boston to East Chelmsford, Massachusetts, where the large Merrimack River could provide far more power. The first mills, the Merrimack Manufacturing Company, were running by 1823. [5] The settlement was incorporated as the town of Lowell in 1826, and became the city of Lowell ten years later. Boasting ten textile corporations, all running on the Waltham System and each considerably larger than the Boston Manufacturing Company, Lowell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltham-Lowell_system 8/9/2019 Waltham-Lowell system - Wikipedia Page 3 of 4 became one of the largest cities in New England and the model, now known as the Lowell System, was copied elsewhere in New England, often in other mill towns developed by the Boston Associates. Examples include Manchester, New Hampshire; Lewiston, Maine; Lawrence, Massachusetts; and Holyoke, Massachusetts. Decline Eventually, cheaper and less organized foreign labor replaced the mill girls. Even by the time of the founding of Lawrence in 1845, there were questions being raised about its viability. [6] One of the leading causes of this transition to foreign labor and the demise of the system was the coming of the Civil War. Girls went to be nurses, back to their farms, or into positions that men had left when they went to the army.17 These girls were out of the mills for the duration Tintype of two young of the war and when the mills reopened after the war, the girls were gone women in Lowell, Massachusetts (circa 1871) because they no longer needed the mills. They had rooted into their new occupations or moved on in life to the point where the mill was no longer suitable for them. [7] The lack of mill girls created a movement towards Irish immigrants. The Irish community that was building in Lowell, Massachusetts was not exclusively female unlike the grouping of mill girls in the dormitories. 8 The proportion of male employment at the mill increased which rapidly changed the demographics of the people that III work there. [8] The Lowell plant became heavily dependent on the foreign lower-class, especially the Irish immigrants that flocked to Massachusetts. [2] This reliance on foreign workers forced the mills to One of the last remaining textile mill become what they had been trying to avoid with the mill girls. Poverty boarding houses in Lowell, snuck up on them and they were forced to deal with slums and a poor Massachusetts on right, part of the lower-class. These immigrants tended to have families and they did not Lowell National Historical Park live in the dormitory style of the mill girls. While in many cases the boardinghouses outlived the system, families of immigrant workers typically lived in tenement neighborhoods, and off company property. See also Mills and Factories in the Industrial United States Lowell mill girls References Dublin, Thomas (1989). "Review: Lowell, Massachusetts and the Reinterpretation of American Industrial Capitalism". The Public Historian. National Council on Public History. 11 (4): 159-64. doi: 10.2307/3378079 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F3378079) ISSN 1533-8576 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/1533-8576). JSTOR 3378079 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3378079). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltham-Lowell_system 8/9/2019 Waltham-Lowell system - Wikipedia Page 4 of 4 MacDonald, Allan (1937). "Lowell: A Commercial Utopia". The New England Quarterly. 10 (1): 37-62. loi:10.2307/360145 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F360145). ISSN 0028-4866 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0028-4866). JSTOR 360145 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/360145). Notes 1. No. 384: Samuel Slater (http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi384.htm) 2. Dublin 1989, p. 160 3. Walton 2010, p. 168 4. Vance 1966, p. 316 5. Alan Alelrod and Charles Phillips (2008). What Every American Should Know About American History: 225 Events that Shaped the Nation. Avon, MA: Adams Media; 3rd edition. p. 86. ISBN 978-1-59869-428-4 6. http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/mhr/2/ford.htmlF Peter A. Ford - "Father of the whole enterprise" Charles S. Storrow and the Making of Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1845-1860 7. MacDonald 1937, p. 61 8. Dublin 1975, p. 34 External links Fire map of the Merrimack Manufacturing Company and Dutton and Worthen Street boardinghouses, 1924 (http://library.uml.edu/clh/Atlas/1924/Plate_01a.pd Boardinghouses and their demolition, 1960s (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage? collld=pphhphoto&fileName=ma/ma0200/ma0299/photos/browse.db&action=browse&recNum=0&title2=New% 20Block,%20Dutton%20Street,%20Lowell,%20Middlesex%20County,%20MA&displayType=1&itemLink=D? hh:7:/temp/~pp_guJZ:) More boardinghouses, 1960s (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage? collld=pphhphoto&fileName=ma/ma0200/ma0297/photos/browse.db&action=browse&recNum=0&title2=Brick% 20Block,%20Dutton%20Street,%20Lowell,%20Middlesex%20County,%20MA&displayType=1&itemLink=D? hh:9:./temp/~pp_guJZ:) Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Waltham-Lowell_system&oldid=897082593" This page was last edited on 14 May 2019, at 17:10 (UTC). Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltham-Lowell_system 8/9/2019 Merrimack Manufacturing Company - Wikipedia Page 1 of 2 WIKIPEDIA Merrimack Manufacturing Company The Merrimack Manufacturing Company (also known as Merrimack Mills (1) was the first of the major textile manufacturing concerns to open in Lowell, Massachusetts, beginning operations in 1823. [2] Contents History References External links Archives and records An 1850 drawing of the Merrimack Manufacturing Company History After the death of Francis Cabot Lowell of the Boston Manufacturing Company, his associates (commonly referred to as the Boston Associates) began planning a larger operation in East Chelmsford, Massachusetts, along the Merrimack River. The Merrimack Manufacturing Company, modeled after the second Boston Manufacturing Company mill, was built concurrently with the necessary canals, machine shop, dyehouse, and boardinghouses for the operatives. The system of operation the company employed became known as the Lowell System. Initially capitalized with The Merrimack Manufacturing $600,000, [3] its typical product was calico cloth. Situated at the foot of the Company is shown as dotted Merrimack Canal, the original mills received the full 32' drop of the river. lines (demolished) at the Merrimack River end of the Closely associated with the Proprietors of Locks and Canals and at one Merrimack Canal point, merged with the company under the same agents (such as Kirk Boott), the Merrimack Company was the "parent" company of the later Lowell firms - although they were technically competitors. The Merrimack Company also was very powerful in the politics of the settlement, later town, and later city, of Lowell. However, as textile production in the United States shifted away from New England, the Merrimack Manufacturing Company's fortunes reversed. The company was able to survive the Great Depression due to military contracts and awards which revamped the surrounding economy; it was among the last of Lowell's textile giants to close. Shortly after it ceased operations in the late 1950s, nearly the entire complex was demolished for urban renewal in 1960. [1] A few years later, many of the boardinghouses were destroyed as well. Today, the site is occupied by new arterial roads, parking lots, a few low-rise office buildings, and a high-rise housing tower, as well as the newer buildings of Lowell High School. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrimack_Manufacturing_Compan 8/9/2019 Merrimack Manufacturing Company - Wikipedia Page 2 of 2 2 From 1900 until 1946, the Merrimack Manufacturing Company ran a plant in Huntsville, Alabama as well. [4] References 1. "Merrimack Company Demolition" (http://library.uml.edu/clh/Lophoto/Mill/mmd.htm). Center for Lowell History. University of Massachusetts Lowell Libraries. Retrieved July 27, 2014. 2. Alan Alelrod and Charles Phillips (2008). What Every American Should Know About American History: 225 Events that Shaped the Nation. Avon, MA: Adams Media; 3rd edition. p. 86. ISBN 978-1-59869-428-4. 3. Clark, Victor S (1916). History of Manufactures in the United States 1607-1860. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington. p. 405. 4. Fisk, Sarah Huff; Jenkins, Debra (Winter-Spring 2008). Jacquelyn Proctor Reeves (ed.). "Merrimack Mill History" (http://huntsvillehistorycollection.org/hh/hhpics/hhr/pdf/Volume_33_1_Winter-Spring-08.pdf)(PDF). Huntsville Historical Review. Huntsville-Madison County Historical Society. 33 (1): 75-84. Archived https://www.webcitation.org/6ROUMcBgy? url=http://huntsvillehistorycollection.org/hh/hhpics/hhr/pdf/Volume_33_1_Winter-Spring-08.pdf)(PDF) from the original on July 28, 2014. Retrieved July 27, 2014. External links Fire map of the property in 1924 (http://library.uml.edu/clh/Atlas/1924/Plate_01a.pdf) Rowhouses and their demolition (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage? collld=pphhphoto&fileName=ma/ma0200/ma0299/photos/browse.db&action=browse&recNum=0&title2=New% 20Block,%20Dutton%20Street,%20Lowell,%20Middlesex%20County,%20MA&displayType=1&itemLink=D? hh:7:./temp/~pp_guJZ::) More rowhouses (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage? Illd=pphhphoto&fileName=ma/ma0200/ma0297/photos/browse.db&action=browse&recNum=0&title2=Brick% 20Block,%20Dutton%20Street,%20Lowell,%20Middlesex%20County,%20MA&displayType=1&itemLink=D? hh:9:./temp/~pp_guJZ::) Archives and records Merrimack Manufacturing Company records (http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HBS.Baker.EAD:bak00471) at Baker Library Special Collections, Harvard Business School. Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? title=Merrimack_Manufacturing_Company&oldid=902431440" This page was last edited on 18 June 2019, at 19:31 (UTC). Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrimack_Manufacturing_Company 8/9/2019 Collection: Merrimack Manufacturing Company records HOLLIS for Archival Discovery Page 1 of 3 HOLLIS for Archival Discovery COLLECTION Identifier: Mss:4421821-1946 M572 " CITATION REQUEST VIEW PDF CSV ? ASK A LIBRARIAN Merrimack Manufacturing Company records FOUND IN: Baker Library Special Collections, Harvard Business School, Harvard University / Merrimack Manufacturing Company records COLLECTION OVERVIEW COLLECTION INVENTORY DIGITAL MATERIAL Minutes, treasurer's reports, journals, ledgers, and other papers. Includes auditor's reports (1939- 1944) and legal papers (1838-1880) of the Locks and Canals Co. Dates 1821-1957 Conditions Governing Access Collection is open for research. Some materials may be stored offsite; access requires advance notice. Contact specialcollectionsref@hbs.edu for more information. Extent 22.75 linear feet (71 volumes, 18 boxes, 1 carton) EXPAND ALL SCOPE AND CONTENTS ADDITIONAL DESCRIPTION ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION REPOSITORY DETAILS https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/11/resources/7954 8/9/2019 January Social History I 4, #3 (Spring 1971): ROBERT RICH 263-75. "A WILDERNESS OF WHIGS" The Wealthy Men of Boston P artisan infighting during the Jacksonian era included, as a matter of form, charges by the Democrats that the vast majority of wealthy men supported the Whig party. The Democracy saw itself as the refuge of the masses and scorned Whiggery as a plot perpetrated by the privileged few. The Jacksonians conceded that "a few honest patriotic rich men" voted with them, but stoutly maintained that "almost all the rich" were Whigs. For generations, historians generally subscribed to the belief that most wealthy men in the age of Jackson were indeed Whigs. Recently this old interpretation has been challenged, particularly by the consensus school.2 In The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case, Lee Benson presented one of the fullest ex- positions of the new consensus view. Benson minimized the severity of class-oriented political conflict and argued against the thesis that political divisions could be correlated meaningfully with economic status. He posed the questions, "Did men of wealth strongly tend to give their resources, talents, and prestige to the Whigs rather than to the Democrats? Did a large portion of the business community- however defined-adhere to the Whig faith?" Benson contended that the wealthy and the businessmen could not be so described. Benson concentrated primarily upon the backgrounds of men in places of political leadership, rather than tracing the partisan preferences of wealthy men in general. Thus his conclusion that it was "potentially verifiable" that "the men who led and controlled both major parties in New York belonged to the same socioeconomic ROBERT RICH is a graduate student in history at the University of California, Los Angeles. 1. Boston Post, 7, 13 July 1835. 2. For Jacksonian era historiography, see Charles Grier Sellers, Jr., "Andrew Jackson versus the Historians," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 64 (March 1958): 615-34; Alfred A. Cave, Jacksonian Democracy and the Historians (Gainesville, 1964). 3. Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy; New York as a Test Case (Princeton, 1961), 80. 270 journal of social history Lee ran as the regular Democratic candidate for state senator, but in 1834 the Whigs named him to their Committee of Public Safety, and he won election to the legislature as a Whig. 24 By 1841, Lee was content in having the Whigs under William Henry Harrison replace the Van Buren regime. He disagreed with Whig positions on a new national bank, as well as on the tariff issue, but he rationalized that "the men coming with power have more talents and character as I think, than those who are retiring." Lee took the socially proper position and supported the Whigs who were "made of better stuff, and more polished," although he opposed their policies on many substantive issues. 25 An even more prominent pro-Jacksonian member of the elite in the late 1820s was Theodore Lyman, Jr., the son of a wealthy and respec- table family. His father had been part of the Essex Junto, and the younger Lyman followed family tradition by serving as a Federalist in the Massachusetts legislature from 1820 to 1825. He also brought his literary talents to bear upon political matters in A Short History of the Hartford Convention, an apologia for that Federalist gathering.26 Ironically, Lyman's Federalism led him to support Andrew Jackson. Lyman was one of the Federalists who had never forgiven John Quincy Adams's apostasy in supporting the Embargo and defecting to the Republicans. In order to defeat Adams, Lyman himself embraced Republicanism. In 1824, he backed William H. Crawford for the presidency, and in 1828 he became a Jackson man. 27 With other "silk-stocking" Democrats, Lyman founded and edited the Jackson Republican, a newspaper devoted to the "preservation of our republican institutions" and the election of Andrew Jackson.28 Lyman fully understood the difficulties of being a Democrat in Boston. "It is not the easiest thing in the world either to establish a Jackson paper in Boston or to conduct it after established," he wrote. "The community is either hostile or neutral."29 In order to soften the opposition and make Jacksonianism socially acceptable, Lyman's 24. Post, 23 February 1836; Porter, Jacksons and Lees, 1:115-16; Darling, Political Changes, 84. Darling's investigations did not reveal "Lee as a participant in the affairs of the Democratic party in Massachusetts" (12). Certainly Lee was an unusual Democrat, but he did, at times, appear on the regular Henshaw ticket; see New England Paladium and Commercial Advertiser, 24 May 1829 and Post, 7 November 1832. 25. Henry Lee to Thomas Thornely, 24 February 1841 printed in Porter, Jacksons and Lees, 2: 1439-44. 26. DAB, 6:518; Theodore Lyman, "Hon. Theodore Lyman, Jr." Memorial Biog- raphies of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, 9 vols. (1880-1908), :169-88. 27. Ibid., 188-89; Darling, Political Changes, 41-42, 60. 28. "Prospectus" for Jackson Republican in Norcross Papers, MHS. 29. Theodore Lyman to Samuel Crocker, 31 July 1828, written on the back of "Pros- pectus" in ibid. WHIGS IN BOSTON 271 faction styled itself the "Federal Republicans" and passed resolu- tions at public meetings averring that "the party that now supports General Jackson is as distinguished for those eminent endow- ments, that entitle men to consideration in society as any party" since the time of George Washington. 30 Lyman's pro-Jackson activity provoked the scorn of elite Boston, but he did not gain power in the Democratic party. 31 His newspaper's faction competed with the other Jackson paper, the Statesman (later the Post) which spoke for the David Henshaw group. After the distribution of federal patronage to the Henshaw wing of the party, Lyman's clique dissolved. By 1835, the Post was asking rhetorically, "Where now are these 'genteel democrats'?"32 More typically, Federalists made a smooth transition to National Republicanism and then formed the core of the Whig party. This group had no finer representative than Thomas Handasyd Perkins, an archetypical "merchant prince," member of the Hartford Con- vention, and Federalist legislator. He felt deep frustration because of the Jacksonian movement, and immediately after Jackson's re- election he wrote, "was I young, I should go mad-as it is, I take the thing easy, knowing that I shall not have long to suffer. "33 A government of the wise, the good, and the rich would have been more congenial to Perkins than one in which the masses participated. In addition to ex-Federalists, some of whom briefly supported Jackson, the Whig Party also gathered into its ranks "a great many renegade old republicans." These men, who had, in the opinion of the Post, "relinquished their democratic principles along with their youth, their honesty and enthusiasm,"34 included Benjamin W. Crowninshield. His family, although prosperous, had been Repub- lican, and unlike Lyman and Lee, Crowninshield had supported the War of 1812, during which he increased his fortune by privateering. As a reward for the financial and moral support rendered the govern- ment, as well as for party loyalty, James Madison appointed Crown- inshield Secretary of the Navy in 1814. 35 30. Columbian Centinel, 19 March 1828. 31. Community vengeance included a libel suit brought against Lyman by Daniel Webster. See J. H. Benton, A Notable Libel Case, the Criminal Prosecuion of Theodore Lyman, Jr. by Daniel Webster (Boston, 1904); Darling Political Changes, 64-66. 32. Ibid., 62-63, 70-71; Post, 25 March 1835. 33. DAB, 7:477; "Our First Men," 35-36; [Forbes], Rich Men, 51; Thomas G. Cary, "Thomas Handasyd Perkins," in Freeman Hunt, ed., Lives of American Merchants, 2 vols. (New York, 1856), 1:33-101; T. H. Perkins to Nicholas Biddle, 9 November 1832, Biddle Papers, Library of Congress. 34. Post, 9 November 1836. 35. Porter, Jacksons and Lees, 1:106; DAB, 2:577-78. 272 journal of social history Crowninshield spent the most important part of his political life as a Jeffersonian and has been remembered as a "Democrat." 36 He was not, however, a Jacksonian Democrat. As a congressman represen- ting the Salem district from 1823 to 1831, he generally supported Adams and held an unflattering view of Jackson. "The truth is nobody respects or cares a cent about him," Crowninshield wrote of the Old Hero in 1831. And he showed his New England prejudice by remarking of Jackson's followers that "the only joy they have, is that, no Yankee fills the throne & that makes up for every other curse." When National Republicans in Salem denied Crownin- shield renomination in favor of young Rufus Choate, he moved to Boston and promptly gained election as a National Republican to the legislature. 38 In addition to renegade Jeffersonian Democrats, some disgruntled Jacksonian Democrats also entered Whig ranks. Among Boston's wealthy men the most notable Jacksonian defector was Franklin Haven, president of the Merchants' Bank. A vigorous Jacksonian in the 1830s, Haven served on the Democratic County Committee and ran for office on tickets which the Post assured its readers contained only men who were "DEMOCRATS TO THE BACKBONE." In 1833 Haven served on a committee which invited President Jackson to visit the city, the same year that Haven's bank was chosen as an original deposit or "pet" bank. 39 After the 1830s Haven took little part in partisan affairs, and he never displayed Whig sympathies as openly as he had his Jackson- ianism. Haven's drift toward Whiggery began in 1835 or 1836 when he became a close friend of Daniel Webster. Their families often exchanged visits, and Haven attempted to advise Webster on financial matters. But Haven also maintained friendships with leading Demo- crats, including Marcus Morton and David Henshaw. These ties to men in both parties proved helpful to Haven and his bank. In 1838, Van Buren made an "unsolicited" appointment of Haven as Federal Pension Agent for the state, and he continued to prosper when the Whigs came to power since Webster advised the 36. Ibid. 37. B. W. Crowninshield to G. H. S. Dearborn, 7 January 1831, in Norcross Papers, MHS. 38. Atlas, 10 November 1832. 39. Professional and Industrial History, 2:280-81; Richard P. Chapman, One Hundred Years on State Street ! Merchants National of Boston" (1831-1956) (New York, 1956), 9; Frank Otto Gatell, "Spoils of the Bank War; Political Bias in the Selection of Pet Banks," American Historical Review 60 (October 1964), 50-52; Post, 25 May and 11 November 1833, 7 November 1835. WHIGS IN BOSTON 273 United States Marshal to use the Merchants' Bank for government funds. In 1849, Haven received a Whig appointment as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in Boston. 40 In 1854, the Whigs, obviously counting Haven as a friend, nomi- nated him for the legislature. He expressed no opposition to the party, but he felt compelled to decline since holding elected office might cause neglect of his other duties. He still held two federal posts, and with Democrats ruling in Washington it would have been un- diplomatic to appear on the other party's ticket. 41 Haven and former Federalists Lyman and Lee were among twenty wealthy original supporters of Jackson who defected. Battles over such issues as the tariff, patronage, and the Second Bank of the United States undermined much of the minimal support Jackson had mustered among Boston's wealthy. And at all times, social con- siderations dictated that a wealthy man who wished to be accepted by the elite must conform to Whiggery. Proper Boston maintained religious as well as political standards, and the affluent of the city generally followed the elite's preference for Unitarianism or Episcopalianism. The religious affiliations of 265 (37.1 percent) of the 714 wealthy men were identified, and of these, 175 (66.0 percent) were Unitarians. The second largest number of identifications was made for Congregationalists, 38 (14.3 percent), followed closely by Episcopalians, 35 (13.2 percent). There were also a handful of Swedenborgians (5), Baptists (4), Methodists (3), Universalists (2), Catholics (2), and one Jew. The Unitarian faith ranked as the most socially proper and "embraced the larger part of the men eminent for ability, worth, and beneficence, and most of the principal merchants, lawyers, and physicians "42 For example, the congregation at Brattle Street Church included such families as the Lodges, Otises, and Grays, plus the millionaires William, Amos, and Abbott Lawrence.