USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Boston's immigrants, 1790-1865 : a study in acculturation > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25
14 Winsor, op. cit., IV, 121 ff. For the canal and its effects, cf. Robert Green- halgh Albion, Rise of New York Port, [1815-1860] ... (New York, 1939), 76-94.
Winsor, op. cit., IV, III.
Henry Bradshaw Fearon, Sketches of America, a Narrative of a Journey (London, 1818), 109; John Robert Godely, Letters from America (London, 1844), I, 17; Dissertation Copy, 10, n. 37. Albion stresses the importance of geographical position and the establishment of the packet lines in explaining the preëminence of New York (Albion, op. cit., 16-54). But Boston's position was fully as advantageous as that of New York (cf. ibid., 24-37; Edwin J. Clapp, Port of Boston . .. [New Haven, 1916], 21 ff.), and the failure of the packets to develop in Boston was itself the result of the lack of hinterland (cf. Albion, op. cit., 46; infra, 9, n. 21).
17 Cf. Edward Everett, "The Western Railroad" (1835), Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions (Boston, 1850), II, 144 ff .; Edward Everett, "Opening of the Railroad to Springfield" (1839), ibid., II, 367 ff .; Christopher Roberts, Middlesex Canal, 1793-1860 (Cambridge, 1938), 19 ff .; Winsor, op. cit., IV, II2-116.
18 "Report of the Select Committee of the House of Representatives . on
9
SOCIAL BOSTON, 1790-1845
1831 was the first line chartered in Massachusetts, and not until 1835 was the first ready for traffic. Although the Western Railroad opened in December, 1841, Bostonians proved singu- larly inept in the management of their own affairs, and not until after the Civil War was there a direct connection between the Boston wharves and Chicago. By that time the other great ports had already effected permanent contact with the west and had preëmpted its trade.19
For a time, tremendous expansion in the industrial hinter- land compensated for Boston's shrinking agricultural environs. The period directly following the War of 1812 witnessed the amazing growth of textile centers at Lowell, Fall River, and the mill towns of the Merrimac. For these factories and for the shoe industries about Lynn, Boston became the entrepôt through which goods flowed to all quarters of the continent. On the basis of these enterprises, a flourishing coasting busi- ness in which shoes and cotton goods were exchanged for corn and cotton developed with the south.20 Ultimately, this trade too acquired triangular features. The excess cotton from the slave-tilled fields of the south which New England mills could not absorb found a ready market in Liverpool, and the trans- atlantic leg of the process tended to become increasingly im- portant.21 Eventually, however, Boston's failure to develop
the ... Expediency of Constructing a Railway . . . to . . Albany," Massa- chusetts House Documents, 1826-27, no. 13, p. 28.
19 Winsor, op. cit., IV, 126, 129, 138 ff .; Morison, op. cit., 230. Hopes that Boston might share in the great western trade when the completion of the Vermont Central Railroad gave her a direct connection with Canada were never realized; Canadian rail traffic failed to grow significantly in this period ([E. S. Chesbrough], Tabular Representation of the Present Condition of Boston, in Relation to Railroad Facilities . .. [Boston, 1851], 25, 26; Grattan to Claren- don, July 10, 1853, British Consular Correspondence, F.O. 5/568; [Otis Clapp], Letter to the Hon. Abbott Lawrence . . . on the Present Condition and Future Growth of Boston [Boston, 1853], 4).
20 For the growth of the coastwide trade, cf. Dissertation Copy, 12, n. 45; also E. H. Derby, "Commercial Cities and Towns of the United States - no. XXII -... Boston," Hunt's Merchants' Magazine and Commercial Review, November, 1850, XXIII, 490.
21 Morison, op. cit., 299. Transatlantic trade gravitated towards New York, however, particularly after the establishment of the Black Ball Line in 1816. Similar lines failed in Boston in 1818, 1822, and 1827 because of "the difficulty in
IO
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
links to the hinterland undermined her position as carrier even for New England manufacturers. These found it more profit- able to exchange their products in New York for the wheat of the west and the cotton of the south already being brought there. Following the trend, many Boston merchants like the Tappans set up branches in New York, and many more sent their ships to swell the commerce that flowed up the Hudson.22 In this trade, as elsewhere, Boston's commerce rested upon an extremely uncertain base, though it grew steadily if not sen- sationally.23
Nevertheless, the resultant prosperity, though impermanent and derived from external sources, had an important effect upon the city's integral economic life; it made Boston a power- ful financial center and the greatest money market in America in these years, its "available capital . .. being even greater than that of New York." 24 Previously, some surplus funds had accrued from land, particularly from real estate within the city limits, and some, from amassment started in the colonial period - though on a rather small scale. But, essen- tially, Boston capital blossomed forth in the federal period in the fortunes of the China princes whose risky ventures yielded large profits in lump unsteady sums which could not be im- mediately reinvested.25
This surplus led to a phenomenal development in banking
obtaining return freights of sufficient amounts" (Consul Grattan, enclosure, May 15, 1844, British Consular Correspondence, F.O. 5/4II, no. 12; Morison, op. cit., 232 ff .; Albion, op. cit., 46; H. A. Hill, "Boston and Liverpool Packet Lines . . . ," New England Magazine, January, 1894, IX, 549 ff.). Only in the Mediterranean trade did Boston hold a commanding position (Morison, op. cit., 287, 292; statistics in Neapolitan Consular Correspondence, Reale Archivio di Stato, Politica, fasc. 2415, package 63).
22 John Macgregor, Progress of America ... (London, 1847), II, 176; Winsor, op. cit., IV, 229; Morison, op. cit., 228; Albion, op. cit., 63, 241 ff .; Robert G. Albion, "Yankee Domination of New York Port, 1820-1865," New England Quarterly, October, 1932, V, 665 ff.
23 For statements of tonnage, cf. Dissertation Copy, 15, 414; Morison, op. cit., 378; Macgregor, op. cit., II, 170 ff .; Chesbrough, op. cit., 16.
24 Consul Manners to Lord Palmerston, June 10, 1832, British Consular Correspondence (F.O. America, II Series), F.O. 5/276, no. Io, p. 2.
25 Winsor, op. cit., IV, 96, 153.
II
SOCIAL BOSTON, 1790-1845
which continued to the Civil War in spite of successive depres- sions. In 1790 Boston had only one bank. By 1800 she had three - a branch of the Bank of the United States, the Union Bank, and the Massachusetts Bank - with a combined capital of less than $2,000,000. The last named had been uniformly successful since its foundation in 1784, often paying as much as 16 per cent interest on its capital of $300,000.26 After the War of 1812 growth was sensational: in the decade 1810-20 six new banks were incorporated with a combined capital of $8,500,000. Thereafter, in a startling spurt, there were six new incorporations in 1822, three in 1825, two in 1826, one in 1827, six in 1828, six in 1831, six in 1832, five in 1833, and sixteen new incorporations or expansions in 1836 alone. By 1830 Boston was second only to New York in financial strength and resources, and, when the panic of 1837 intervened, was ready to surpass her rival. Progress in the following years, while not as extraordinary, continued steadily until the panic of 1857 and the Civil War upset the money market.27
These huge resources, seeking an outlet, promoted the de- velopment of industry and transportation in the interior of Massachusetts in the decades following the War of 1812. Be- tween 1780 and 1840, some 2,254 corporations were founded in the state with an aggregate capital of $238,139,222.66, largely raised in Boston. Of these, by far the most important were those devoted to manufacturing. The power of $100,- 000,000 of Boston money gave Boston capitalists a solid grip upon the factories of Haverhill, of Waltham, of Lowell, and of Fall River, from which they drew a steady stream of divi-
26 Cf. Boston Directory, 1789, 50; Boston Directory, 1800, 7; Margaret H. Foulds, "Massachusetts Bank, 1784-1865," Journal of Economic and Business History, February, 1930, II, 256 ff .; Albert Bushnell Hart, Commonwealth History of Massachusetts (New York, 1929), III, 363 ff.
27 Cf. "Report of the List of Incorporations ... Granted by the Legislature of Massachusetts ," Massachusetts Senate Documents, 1836, no. 90, pp. 47- 54; Massachusetts House Documents, 1840, no. 60, pp. 13-16; and Dissertation Copy, Table II, 415; Macgregor, op. cit., II, 154; Winsor, op. cit., IV, 164; Massachusetts Senate Documents, 1838, no. 38, pp. 5 ff .; Daily Evening Tran- script (Boston), March 2, 1830.
I2
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
dends.28 Their money also sponsored great railroads, first across Massachusetts and New England, and finally across the whole continent.29
However, while Boston capital built great industries outside of Boston, it failed to develop them at home. In 1790 Boston was a village of small artisans and handicraftsmen, its industry centered in the need for satisfying the home market. Tailors and cobblers, butchers and grocers, went about the business of feeding and clothing the Bostonians much as they had a hundred years earlier. Whatever other enterprise there was, grew out of and was subsidiary to the commercial activities of the city. Chandlers and ropemakers, duck weavers and spar- makers there were, but of autonomous industrial activity there was no sign.30 A boom in shipbuilding in the 1790's soon col-
28 Massachusetts House Documents, 1840, no. 60, p. 29; cf. also Winsor, op. cit., IV, 104 ff., 190 ff .; Derby, loc. cit., 488. For complaints by manufac- turers against this financial control, cf. E. B. Bigelow, Remarks on the De- pressed Condition of Manufactures in Massachusetts ... (Boston, 1858), 18, 19.
29 Chesbrough, op. cit., 6 ff.
30 This is indicated by the professional composition of the population of Boston in 1789, an approximate, though of course, not exact conception of which may be derived from the number of listings in the directory of 1789 classifiable into each of the following groups:
Merchants 183 Marine industries 89
Brokers
31
Mariners 49
Professionals
142
Unskilled laborers I6
Shopkeepers, skilled craftsmen 331 Innkeepers 68
Artisans
501
Unknown 66
TOTAL 1,476
Total number of families in Boston 3,343
(Tabulated from Boston Directory . .. [Boston, 1789], passim. For the num- ber of families cf. S. N. D. North, Heads of Families at the First Census 1790, Massachusetts [Washington, 1908], 10.) Contemporary evidence (an- alyzed in Dissertation Copy, 20 ff., n. 61) supports this point of view. Even in 1845, industry was small in scale and local in character. Table I, infra, shows that by far the majority of those engaged in industry in 1845 were employed either in establishments of ten or less, or were unclassifiable, that is, worked in their homes. The whole number of industrial workers, including the last group, was less than ten thousand in a population of almost 165,000 (total of the towns included in this table, cf. infra, Table II). This had always been true. The federal census of 1820 showed 2,905 engaged in manufactures, 2,499 in commerce and 192 in agriculture in Suffolk County in a total population of 43,940 (United States Census, Aggregate Amount of ... Persons in the United
I3
SOCIAL BOSTON, 1790-1845
lapsed, and Boston was replaced by the towns of the lower Merrimac and the North River, not regaining her position as the shipbuilder for Massachusetts until well into the 1840's when Donald McKay began to mold the trim figures of his clipper ships in the East Boston yards of Enoch Train.31
Two factors caused Boston capitalists to invest their money not in Boston, but in the new towns around it. In the first place, in at least two major industries inventions had not yet enabled the factory system to replace the domestic or putting- out system which operated most economically in rural dis- tricts. Thus Miss Martineau found that "shoe-making at Lynn is carried on almost entirely in private dwellings, from the circumstance that the people who do it are almost all farmers or fishermen likewise. . . . The whole family works . .. dur- ing the winter; and in the summer the father and sons turn out into the fields, or go fishing." 32 The towns near Boston "at- tracted masons, carpenters and other workmen, in the winter season, when their own professions were dull, to pursue shoe- making. . >> 33 This system also characterized the manufac- ture of ready-made clothing and shirts, in which the sewing was given out in all parts of New England to women who worked for pin-money in spare moments.34
States ... 1820 [s.l.,n.d. (Washington, 1820)], 7) while that of 1840 showed, in the city of Boston alone, 5,333 employed in manufactures and trade, 2,040 in commerce, 586 in the learned professions and 10,831 in navigation (the last figure undoubtedly too high, cf. Massachusetts House Documents, 1842, no. 48, p. 1; Massachusetts House Documents, 1849, no. 127, pp. 6 ff.). The excep- tions, the manufacture of glass and of iron, were heavy industries needing con- siderable labor and lacking the inventions that made possible the mechanized factory system. These located in the suburbs (cf. C. Bancroft Gillespie, Illus- trated History of South Boston . .. [South Boston, 1900], 110-112; Lura Woodside Watkins, Cambridge Glass, 1818 to 1888, the Story of the New Eng- land Glass Company [Boston, n.d. (1930)], 4, 7, 182; [Anne Royall], Sketches of History ... [New Haven, 1826], 341).
31 Cf. Morison, op. cit., 101, 103, 330.
32 Harriet Martineau, Society in America (New York, 1837), II, 59.
33 Eighty Years Progress of the United States: a Family Record of American Industry . .. (Hartford, 1869), 324; Winsor, op. cit., IV, 99.
34 Cf. Daily Evening Transcript, September 25, 30, 1830; Boston Pilot, Au- gust 30, 1856; Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, Twenty-Second Annual Re- port of the Executive Committee . .. (Boston, 1856), 26.
14
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
Even industries in which the factory system prevailed did not flourish in Boston. Machines depended upon water power, the fee simple of whose sites "would not cost the annual ex- pense of a steam engine," 35 and despite the efforts of Uriah Cotting and other Bostonians to harness the Mill Dam for manufacturing, the swift waters of the Merrimac and the upper Charles offered superior attractions. Furthermore, Boston of- fered no advantages as to labor supply. Within the city there were no appreciable numbers ready and willing to work at wages low enough to foster the establishment of profitable new enterprises. But in the country areas, farm girls whose families found it increasingly difficult to eke a living out of the hard New England soil, gladly spent a few years before mar- riage helping out financially at home, and gathering a dowry as well. More tractable, more exploitable, and more plentiful than any labor source then in Boston, they stimulated the di- version of capital away from the city.
Except for fishing, which fluctuated in significance and never in this period became as important as elsewhere in Massachu- setts, there was no other economic activity of any proportions.36 Boston remained in 1845 a town of small traders, of petty arti- sans and handicraftsmen, and of great merchant princes who built fortunes out of their "enterprise, intelligence, and fru- gality," and used the city as a base for their far-flung activ- ities.37 Commercially, Boston's foundations were unstable, and the eastern trade which constituted the whole of its glitter- ing superstructure had already slipped into a decline. Indus- trially, there seemed little to look forward to, for large-scale ventures failed to locate there. The field of handicrafts was limited and the prospects of the agricultural environs of Boston were meagre indeed.38
35 Address of the American Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Manu- factures to the People of the United States (New York, 1817), 11, 14. Cf. also Arthur Harrison Cole, American Wool Manufacture (Cambridge, 1926), I, 86 ff. Raymond McFarland, History of the New England Fisheries . . . (New York, 1911), 129 ff., 187; Morison, op. cit., 31, 150, 375.
37 Derby, loc. cit., 496.
38 This by no means implies that the wealth of Boston was declining. On the
I5
SOCIAL BOSTON, 1790-1845
As against the promise of the broad fields and the new cities of the west and south, Boston offered few opportunities to those who lacked the twin advantages of birth and capital. Enterprising young men who made no headway chose to depart, and led a steady stream of emigration from the city. Although to observers it seemed the most homogeneous American com- munity, throughout this period the proportion of native Bos- tonians was actually dwindling. By 1850, only half the descendants of the Bostonians of 1820 still lived there. Con- sequently, Boston receded steadily from its third place in 1790 on the roster of American cities. Although its absolute num- bers increased slowly, until 1845 its rate of growth was small compared to that of its rivals. And that its population did not decline absolutely was due in fact, not to the maintenance of its native stock, or to migrations from abroad, but to incursions in the 1820's and 1830's from the depressed rural areas of New England.39
Though wealth stimulated only finance and banking in Bos- · ton, it nevertheless was put to interest there in many other ways. The merchant's contact with the world exerted a pro- found influence upon the whole social character of the city, transforming it from John Hancock's theatreless town of 1790 to the gracious cosmopolitan Hub of Ticknor and Bancroft in 1845. Absence of business activity and of heavy industries
contrary, the assessed value of its property rose steadily from $42,140,200 in 1822 to $135,948,700 in 1845, while the valuation of its suburbs in 1840 totalled some $15,000,000 (Nathan Matthews, City Government of Boston [Boston, 1895], 190, 191; Derby, loc. cit., 485; Chesbrough, op. cit., 20, 21). 39 'Cf. Jesse Chickering, "Report of the Committee . .. 1850," Boston City Documents, 1851, no. 60, pp. 24 ff .; Historical Review and Directory of North America . . . by a Gentleman Immediately Returned from a Tour . . . (Cork, 1801), II, 63; infra, Table II. For the movement away from rural New Eng- land, cf. Percy Wells Bidwell, "Rural Economy in New England at the Be- ginning of the Nineteenth Century," Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, April, 1916, XX, 383-391 ; for the absence of foreign immi- gration, cf. Josiah Quincy, Figures of the Past from the Leaves of Old Journals (Boston, 1883), 112; [James W. Hale], Old Boston Town .. . by an 1801-er . .. (New York, 1880), 34; John Stetson Barry, History of Massachusetts .. . (Boston, 1857), III, 372; [William Tudor], Letters on the Eastern States (New York, 1820), 315; Timothy Dwight, Travels in New England . . . (New Haven, 1821), 1, 506.
16
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
requiring a large proletariat obviated the development of slums and blighted areas. And windfall money fortuitously acquired was benevolently parted with for urban improvements. The enhancement of the city accentuated Bostonians' civic con- sciousness and pride. They seriously accepted their responsibil- ities as citizens and actively concerned themselves with solving municipal problems.
In 1790 Bulfinch's Pillar replaced the old Beacon Hill light, blown down the preceding year, initiating a process which levelled the three heights of Beacon Hill, nibbled at the fastness of Fort Hill, filled in the old Mill Pond with their sands, threw the famous Mill Dam across the sluggish waters of the Back Bay, doubled the town's area by filling in flats along its water- front, and united it with its neighbors by a row of sturdy bridges. Levelling the hills was primarily a matter of real estate investments, as was the filling of the Mill Pond. The Mill Dam united a project to benefit by tolls and to utilize the waters of the Back Bay for industrial purposes. The bridges across the Charles and the ferry to East Boston likewise were constructed by men who hoped to make money from tolls, as was the South Boston Bridge, whose projectors counted as well on the rise in value of South Boston land. But these enter- prises, though privately conceived and carried out, were built with an eye to the betterment of the city and contributed toward making it a handsomer and more spacious place to live in.40
This period saw the extension of the social boundaries of Boston far beyond the political limits of 1790 or even of 1845. During these fifty years six peripheral towns were gradually
40 Cf. Francis S. Drake, Town of Roxbury ... Its History and Antiquities (Boston, 1905), 345; Robert A. Woods, City Wilderness . . . (Boston, . 1898), 23 ff .; State Street Trust Company, Boston, England and Boston, New England ... (Boston, 1930), 12 ff .; Dissertation Copy, 26, 177; George H. McCaffrey, Political Disintegration and Reintegration of Metropolitan Boston (MS., H. C. L.), 189 ff .; Winsor, op. cit., IV, 25-33, 46. For a perspective of the extent of these operations, cf. the maps for 1789, 1800, 1820, and 1848, cited in Boston, Engineering Department, List of Maps of Boston . . . (Annual Report of the City Engineer, February 1, 1903, Appendix I, Boston, 1903), 79, 84, 95, 125.
I7
SOCIAL BOSTON, 1790-1845
swept into the vortex of Boston life. In 1790, five - Brighton, Brookline, Cambridge, Dorchester, and Roxbury - were purely agricultural villages, no more connected with Boston than sim- ilar communities in Worcester and Berkshire counties. Even Charlestown, in parts of which the beginnings of town life existed, remained primarily rural. In the succeeding decades, however, urban Boston spread beyond the confines of the nar- row peninsula. Since even the reclamation of land from the Bay did not accommodate the city's needs, many Bostonians moved off to the outskirts where house rents were half those in Boston proper, abandoning their homes to the mounting number of hotels, offices, and blocks of stores. As transporta- tion improved and commutation tickets became available at twenty to forty dollars a year, the number of those working in Boston but living elsewhere increased, and the tie between the city and suburbs grew closer.41
As a result, Boston absorbed sections of each town socially, whether or not they remained politically intact. South Boston was annexed, and East Boston and the South Cove were devel- oped through the cupidity of real estate speculators.42 Though attempts at political assimilation by Boston in 1834 failed, the urban portions of Charlestown were soon divorced from Somer- ville.43 By 1845 the agricultural areas of Chelsea formed a new township, North Chelsea, leaving the urban districts to the metropolis. In the same way, East Cambridge became distinct from Cambridge, and Roxbury from West Roxbury. Within
41 Derby, loc. cit., 484 ff .; "Report and Tabular Statement of the Cen- sors . . , Boston City Documents, 1850, no. 42, pp. 13, 39; Josiah Curtis, Report of the Joint Special Committee . .. (Boston, 1856), 4; Courrier des États-Unis (New York), June 28, 1850. For the difference in rents, cf. Consul Manners to the Undersecretary of State, March 10, 1832, British Consular Cor- respondence (F. O. America, II Series), F.O. 5/276, no. 6.
42 Edward H. Savage, Boston Events . .. from 1630 to 1880 . . . (Boston, 1884), 7; Thomas C. Simonds, History of South Boston . (Boston, 1857), 72 ff .; Boston Common Council, "South Boston Memorial . .. April 22, 1847," Boston City Documents, 1847, no. 18, p. 5; Samuel Eliot Morison, Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis . .. (Boston, 1913), I, 243; Dissertation Copy, 28, n. 89; McCaffrey, op. cit., 182 ff .; Winsor, op. cit., IV, 30, 38-40.
43 McCaffrey, op. cit., 53 ff., 196 ff .; Winsor, op. cit., III, 284, IV, 25; Hon. Ellis W. Morton, Annexation of Charlestown ... a Condensed Report of the Argument ... February 27, 1871 (Boston, 1871), 5.
I8
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
a decade, Washington Village was torn from Dorchester, and even distant Dedham felt the influence of Boston's proximity. By 1845, Boston had outgrown her charter limits, for its map expanded as rapidly as its face changed.44
A geographic redistribution of population accompanied the physical transformation. In 1790 Boston was a small, closely- knit town any part of which was easily reached by foot. The traders lived fairly close to their counting houses and could conveniently return home for the mid-day dinner. There was no great gap between classes, and therefore no desire for sec- tional distribution. But as the town grew, as the well-to-do became wealthy, and as the outlying districts became more accessible, the people spread out and at the same time were localized in distinctive areas. The filling in of the Mill Pond to form the West End and the levelling of Beacon Hill opened the first two new vicinities. Here and in "New or West Boston" were built the homes of the merchants who gradually aban- doned the old North End in the decade or so after the turn of the century.45 The more numerous middle-class found its out- let in the developing suburbs, first in the South End, where they forced out a small, poorer population, then in South Boston, and finally, in Roxbury and Dorchester.46 The humbler in- habitants lived in "nigger hill" behind the State House and in the North End, but tended to concentrate particularly about Fort Hill, the cheapest part of the city.47 By 1845 residential areas were well fixed. The very wealthy either remained on
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.