USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Boston's immigrants, 1790-1865 : a study in acculturation > Part 22
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United States
2,143
4,580
Ireland
9,79I
17,293
England
426
I,OII
Africa
I60
40
Germany
I38
198
France
6I
I43
Scotland
61
203
Italy
30
25
Sweden
30
36
Portugal
25
7
Canada
I5
I2
Nova Scotia
9
Norway
6
5I
Spain
4
I2
Others
I5
27
2
5
I
* "Annual Report of Chief of Police, 1865," Boston City Documents, 1865, no. 8, pp. 8, 9.
[ 244 ]
TABLE XXV
AMOUNT PAID BY THE STATE FOR THE SUPPORT OF LUNATIC STATE PAUPERS IN SUFFOLK COUNTY,* 1838-1859 +
Year
Amount
1838
$ 1,573
1839
2,192
1840
2,793
184I
6,263
1842
6,820
1843
8,357
1844
9,5II
I845
9,384
1846
10,170
I847
9,738
1848
9,940
1849
12,954
1850
15,906
185I
15,830
1852
17,295
1853
19,569
1854
19,805
1855
21,059
1856
18,538
1857
17,465
1858
20,183 ¢
1859
* All in Boston.
Derived from Massachusetts Senate Documents, 1848, no. 47; and from the annual reports of the City Auditor and of the Alien Passenger Commissioners (for page references, cf. Dissertation Copy, 468).
# The figures for 1858 also include 1859 until November, when all such insane were transferred to State institutions.
TABLE XXVI
ORPHANS SUPPORTED AT ST. VINCENT'S ORPHAN ASYLUM, BOSTON *
1843
I8
I846
38
1848
38
1849
47
185I
50
1854
79
1855
8I
1856
80
1857
79
1858
159 +
1859
I9I
* Derived from materials in the Boston Pilot and Boston Catholic Observer. For citations cf. Dissertation Copy, 471. + New building opened.
[ 245 ]
TABLE XXVII BOSTON MARRIAGES BY NATIVITY, THREE-YEAR PERIOD, 1863-1865 *
BIRTHPLACE OF BRIDE
BIRTHPLACE OF GROOM
Boston
Massa- chusetts
United States
Great Britain
Ireland
British America
Germany t
Others
Unknown
TOTAL
Boston
395
I42
I93
24
87
52
3
5
. .
90I
Massachusetts
258
319
320
32
50
57
I
5
4
1,046
United States
38I
307
818
58
96
148
IO
3
6
1,827
Great Britain
52
27
45
78
I26
59
2
2
I
392
Ireland
I70
37
47
42
1,997
78
2
5
.
.
2,378
British America
7I
30
64
I7
II4
I64
I
3
464
Germany +
5I
I3
31
II
78
I 5
247
I 2
I
459
Others
23
9
25
14
48
19
2I
II9
.
35
40
Unknown
I
2
I
. .
. .
I
. .
. .
TOTAL
1,402
886
1,544
276
2,596
593
286
I52
50
7,785
278
* Derived from "Report of the City Registrar, 1863-1865," Boston City Documents, 1866, II, no. 88, p. 12; ibid., 1865, no. 42, p. 8; ibid., 1864, no. 47, p. 9. Cf. also Dissertation Copy, Table XXXII, 472.
t Includes Scandinavia.
TABLE XXVIII BOSTON VOTERS, 1840-1858 *
Year
Legal Voters
Actual Vote Cast t
1840
14,474
II,573
1844
?
13,502
1845
20,35I
10,19I
1850
21,220
8,952
1851
?
12,314
1852
21,203
11,956
1853
23,792
12,409
1853
23,792
12,948 #
1854
24,157
13,410
1855
24,272
14,340
1856
?
16,865
1857
?
13,525
1858
?
14,466
* Derived from Lemuel Shattuck, Report to . . . the City Council . . . Census of Boston 1845 .. . (Boston, 1846), 81; Josiah Curtis, Report . .. Census of Boston . . . 1855 . (Boston, 1856), II; Boston Semi-Weekly Advertiser, November 12, 1851; ibid., November 10, 1852; ibid., November 16, 1853; ibid., December 14, 1853; ibid., November 5, 1856; ibid., November 4, 1857; Boston Atlas, November 14, 1854; Boston Daily Courier, November 3, 1858; "Report and Tabular Statement," Boston City Documents, 1850, no. 42, p. 12.
t In the November gubernatorial election unless otherwise indicated. # December mayoralty election.
[ 247 ]
NOTE ON THE STATISTICS OF IMMIGRATION INTO BOSTON
BOTH the federal and state governments kept some statements of immigration into Boston. The state records were kept by the suc- cessive Commissioners of Alien Immigration. This material, drawn up at first merely according to port of origin, and only for a short time by nativity, is in general less reliable and less complete than the federal records.1 The latter, drawn up by the Customs House and transmitted annually to Congress by the Secretary of State, have been completely tabulated for each year 1820-65 in Table VII, Disserta- tion Copy, 421, and are summarized by five year periods in Table V, supra.
There were obstacles to the use of even these. The annual sum- maries in each statement referred to different yearly periods, at various times including the calendar year, the fiscal year, and the year ending August 31. This difficulty was avoided by referring back to the original quarterly returns and retabulating them all on the basis of the calendar year. A more serious difficulty was the lack of con- sistency in the listings. Thus "Great Britain" sometimes included England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, sometimes excluded Ireland, and sometimes excluded both Ireland and Scotland, a situation which rendered accurate enumeration of the Irish impossible. Several at- tempts were made to find a compensating statistical device, but since the difference originated in the caprice of the individual customs official it was deemed best to accept the data as it was given. The listings of minor localities, wherever possible, were combined into larger geographical units, however.2 A tabulation by the "Joint Spe- cial Committee appointed to investigate the Public Charitable In- stitutions of . .. Massachusetts ... 1858" offered different figures for 1831, 1833, 1837 and 1841,3 but those offered in Table V were more accurate.
All these statistics refer of course only to immigration by sea and must be raised from 30 per cent to 50 per cent to account for those who entered by land.
1 Cf. Tables VII a, VII b, Dissertation Copy, 426 ff.
2 For the details, cf. Dissertation Copy, 424.
$ Cf. "Report . ," Massachusetts Senate Documents, 1859, no. 2, pp. 142,
I43.
249
APPENDICES
NOTE TO TABLE XIII
TABLE XIII was derived from the manuscript schedules of the federal marshals who collected the Census of 1850, now deposited in the Division of Old Records of the Bureau of the Census, Commerce Building, Washington, D. C. This census was the first to inquire into both the nativity and occupation of the population. Lacking precedent, its directors faced the complex problems it involved with- out a consistent formula and without a definite conception of objec- tives. DeBow and his collaborators apparently made no attempt to coordinate or reclassify the results on the basis of any consistent principle; and the enumerators exercised a wide degree of latitude in recording occupations which resulted in an amazing variety of listings and occupational descriptions. The absence of standardized method and procedure and the failure to define a clear set of occupational categories enormously complicated the task of tabulating the results.
The tabulations in Tables XIII-XVI were made under a procedure designed to eliminate errors arising from the lack of uniformity in occupational description. The enumerators noted 1,466 different occupations. Each of these was tabulated separately by nativity and by ward. From this primary tabulation, 474 listings were eliminated as representing nominal differences only. The remaining 992 distinct occupations were again tabulated and then combined in Table XIII into sixty-four categories, drawn up after a careful historical con- sideration of the precise nature of the work involved in each occupation.
The basis of this classification was necessarily original. Modern classifications are not applicable to the pre-Civil War period and no previous attempt has been made to classify such occupations sci- entifically. The compilers of the census themselves used extremely arbitrary groupings that frequently destroyed the value of the figures. DeBow was not at all discriminating. He lumped together in one category "commerce, trade, manufactures, mechanic arts, and min- ing," while his others were as general as "agriculture," "labor not agriculture," "army," "sea and river navigation," "law, medicine and divinity," "other pursuits requiring education," "government civil service," "domestic servants," and "others." 1 These groupings were extremely unsatisfactory. In Boston almost every employed person could be included in the first classification. Emphasizing the type of
1 J. D. B. DeBow, Seventh Census of the United States 1850 ... (Washing- ton, 1853), Ixxx.
250
APPENDICES
product rather than the nature of the work performed, such classifi- cations lacked a valid base.
The same fault marred Shattuck's compilation of the local census of 1845. Having specific reference to Boston, this was in some degree more satisfactory than the federal efforts. Shattuck divided the work- ing population into fourteen groups, those contributing to building, clothing, education, food, furniture, health, justice, literature and arts, locomotion, machinery, navigation, religion, unclassified me- chanics, and others (which included 40 per cent of the total).2 Again the nature of the product rather than the type of work was stressed.
The classifications of the State Census of 1855 and of the Federal Census of 1840 and 1860 followed essentially the same principles and therefore had little value. As a result it was necessary to evolve a complete classification of all 992 occupations, based on the actual character of the work involved in each. Careful precautions were taken to ensure uniformity and to make the tables valid for absolute and comparative purposes.
The enumerators cited more than seventy different localities as the place of birth, but these were combined in the original table into twenty simple nativity groups. In Table XIII "Other United States" includes New England (other than Massachusetts); "Other British" includes British North America, England, Scotland, and Wales; and "Others" includes Latin America, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, Scandinavia, Russia and Poland, and Miscellaneous, all of which are listed separately in Dissertation Copy, 436 ff. "Negroes" includes all colored people regardless of nativity.
2 Lemuel Shattuck, Report to the Committee of the City Council ... Census of Boston . . . 1845 ... (Boston, 1846), 83. -
ABBREVIATIONS AND NOTE ON SOURCES
ABBREVIATIONS
B.C.
Bureau of the Census, Division of Old Records, Commerce
Bi.A.V.
Building, Constitution Avenue, Washington, D. C. Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City
B.M.
British Museum Reading Room, Bloomsbury, London, W.C.I
B.P.L.
H.C.L.
I.A.H.S.
Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts Harvard College Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts Irish American Historical Society, New York City
Li.C.
Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
L.U.N.D.
Library of the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana
M.S.L. N.L.I.
Massachusetts State Library, State House, Boston National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin
N.N.L.
National Newspaper Library, British Museum, Colindale Road, Colindale (Hendon), London, N.W.9
N.E.H.G.S.
New England Historical and Genealogical Society, 99 Ash- burton Street, Boston
N.Y .P.L.
New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue, New York
P.R.O.
Public Record Office, Chancery Lane, London
R.A.d.S.
Reale Archivio di Stato - Napoli, Piazza del Grande Archivio, Naples, Italy
Royal Irish Academy, Dawson Street, Dublin
R.I.A. S.J.E.S. Saint John's Boston Ecclesiastical Seminary, Brighton, Massachusetts
Trinity College, Dublin, Library, College Green, Dublin T.C.D.
NOTE ON SOURCES
THE materials for the understanding of a community are infinite. To limit sources is impossible, for, in a sense, everything that was written, read, said or thought, in or about Boston between 1790 and 1865, is germane to the subject of this study. And beyond the purely literary materials lies an endless mine of physical survivals - the relics of the old city, and the descendants of those who lived in it - which offers rich perceptions to those willing to see. Yet this very prodigality bars completeness; the historian can only sample the wide variety before him and compensate by the judiciousness of his choices for the inevitable omissions.
The list which follows is thus in no sense an exhaustive bibliog- raphy; it does not even include all the works cited in the footnotes.1 It only attempts to outline the types of material used in this study and to criticize the more important of them.
I. NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS
THE IMMIGRANT PRESS 2 most consciously expressed the varied im- pulses of immigrant society and forms the most important single source for this study. Newspapers play a threefold part in illuminat- ing the story of aliens. They are the most important source of in- formation on the life of the immigrant community; nowhere else is there as complete a chronicle of arrivals and departures, of the meetings of its societies, and of the doings of its prominent men. Furthermore, the newspaper at once reflected and influenced the views of the immigrants on the problems they faced personally and in relation to the society about them. And because the press was not yet a big business, every significant shade of opinion could afford an organ of expression. Most important of all, the newspapers were the most comprehensive repositories of immigrant literature. The Ger- mans had a few literary monthlies (e.g., Atlantis. Eine Monatschrift für Wissenschaft . . . herausgegeben und redigiert von Christian Esselen [Buffalo]; Meyer's Monatshefte [New York]), but these were restricted in scope, circulation, and influence. And among other groups formal literary journals found no place at all. The newspapers furnished the foreigners' only reading material and the fiction, the
1 For these, cf. Dissertation Copy, 475 ff.
2 The most important papers are discussed supra, 176 ff.
2 54
NOTE ON SOURCES
poetry, and the history that attracted their readers are the most sensitive mirrors of what went on in immigrant minds.
THE NEWSPAPERS OF IRELAND were disappointing for the purposes of this study. They threw some light on the famine and on the process of emigration but few were really interested in the condition of the peasantry. The most valuable was the Cork Examiner (N.N.L.) (1841 ff.), which retained its interest in Corkonians even in their new homes. Its columns contained occasional news of Boston Irishmen and sometimes letters of considerable importance to friends in the old country. Its rival, the Cork Constitution (N.N.L.) (1834 ff.), was less valuable; Tory in sympathy, it was impatient with the emigrants and glad to be rid of them. Dublin papers had little room for anything but politics and the pages of journals like the Armagh Guardian (N.N.L.) (1844) and the Leinster Express (N.N.L.) were devoted to sensational crimes and to similar news of interest to the gentry who read them.
OTHER PERIODICALS were of secondary importance. Boston's press was, on the whole, well above the average of its contemporaries. In the early period the Massachusetts Centinel (continued as the Co- lumbian Centinel) (N.Y.P.L.) and the Independent Chronicle (H.C.L.) were temperate well-balanced sheets, the one Federalist, the other Republican. After 1830, the Daily Evening Transcript (H.C.L.) furnished accurate and generally unbiased news, while the tri-weekly American Traveller (H.C.L.) catered to a wider range of interests. Later in the period the Boston Daily Courier (H.C.L.) and the Whig Boston Daily Atlas (H.C.L.) were reliable, while the Boston Semi-Weekly Advertiser (H.C.L.), like its daily counterpart, reflected the interests and opinions of State Street and the business community. In addition, the city was the home of innumerable weeklies that spoke for special causes. The most helpful were the precursors of the Know-Nothing papers, the American (B.P.L.) and Wide Awake: And the Spirit of Washington (B.P.L.). But in gen- eral it was necessary only to sample these in periods of special interest since the most significant articles were liberally quoted in the immigrant papers.
II. PUBLIC DOCUMENTS
This period was intensely interested in the preservation of its records. The abundance of documentary materials published by all branches of government facilitated the solution of many problems; while their general reliability compensated for the lack of vision on the part of their compilers who could not always foresee the uses to which historians would put them.
255
NOTE ON SOURCES
The quality of the statistical material is especially gratifying. The municipal, state and federal governments all compiled CENSUS REC- ORDS, which after 1845 included a vast amount of social data of considerable significance. Until then, the federal census had followed fairly traditional forms concentrating primarily upon enumeration of the population for purposes of representation. But Lemuel Shattuck's Report to the Committee of the City Council . . . Census of Boston for . . . 1845 ... (Boston, 1846) broke new ground in pointing out the potential social usefulness of the census. His report included a mass of well-digested material on all phases of the life of Boston and its people and furnished a model for all subsequent censuses.
The most significant enumeration for the purposes of this study was that of 1850, taken at the height of the immigration, while the process of adjustment was most critical. Fortunately, the federal census of that year was directed by the far-sighted J. D. B. DeBow who published its results in The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850 . .. (Washington, 1853) and summarized them in his Sta- tistical View of the United States . .. (Washington, 1854). DeBow attempted, with some success, to follow the model set by Shattuck. His was the first federal census, for example, to inquire into both the nativity and occupation of the population; and Vols. XXIII- XXVI of the Original Returns of that census (B.C.) formed the basis for much of the discussion in Chapter III of this work (cf. also supra, 249).
The same year also witnessed a municipal census, reported in the "Report and Tabular Statement of the Censors Appointed ... to Obtain the State Census of Boston, May 1, 1850 .. . . ," Boston City Documents, 1850, no. 42, and discussed in Jesse Chickering's "Report of the Committee ... and also a Comparative View of the Population of Boston in 1850 . . . ," ibid., 1851, no. 60. This census was unusual and valuable for a street by street tabulation of the nativity of the residents.
Thereafter federal and state censuses alternated every five years in providing an enlightening statistical account of the city's develop- ment. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff prepared an Abstract of the Census of . . . Massachusetts Taken . .. the First Day of June, 1855, with Remarks on the Same Prepared under the Direction of Francis DeWitt ... (Boston, 1857), that supplemented the more detailed Report of the Joint Special Committee of the Census of Boston, May, 1855 ... (Boston, 1856) by Josiah Curtis. The federal census of 1860 was summarized by Joseph C. G. Kennedy in the Population of the United States in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census ... (Washington, 1864); but the data on Massa-
256
NOTE ON SOURCES
chusetts may be found in greater detail in George Wingate Chase's Abstract of the Census of Massachusetts 1860 from the Eighth U. S. Census ... Prepared under ... Oliver Warner ... (Boston, 1863). Finally, the period closes with Oliver Warner's Abstract of the Census of Massachusetts, 1865 . . . (Boston, 1867).
The economic history of Massachusetts is remarkably clarified by a series of four INDUSTRIAL CENSUSES, 1837-1865. These were com- piled carefully from data collected by the Secretaries of State. John P. Bigelow's Statistical Tables: Exhibiting the Condition . . . of Industry in Massachusetts . . . 1837 . . . (Boston, 1838), John G. Palfrey's Statistics of the Condition of . . . Industry in Massachu- setts . . . 1845 . .. (Boston, 1846), Francis DeWitt's Statistical Information Relating to . . . Industry in Massachusetts . . . 1855 . . . (Boston, 1856), and Oliver Warner's Statistical Information Relating to . . . Industry in Massachusetts . . . 1865 . . . (Bos- ton, 1866) furnish a sturdy framework for the story of the evolution of Massachusetts' economy through its most important phase. Addi- tional material may be found in McLane's Documents Relative to the Manufactures in the United States (22 Congress, I Session, House Executive Documents, no. 308), in the volume on manufac- tures of the Eighth Census, 1860 (Washington, 1865), and in the historical introductions of the Ninth Census, 1870 (Washington, 1872) and the Twelfth Census, 1900, Manufactures, IX (Washing- ton, 1902).
Beyond the bare statistics there is a rich store of records of all the agencies which had contact with immigrants in Boston. The MUNICI- PAL DOCUMENTS vary in value. The records of the Town of Boston and the minutes of the Selectmen's Meetings down to 1822, published in seven volumes by the Boston Registry Department between 1896 and 1908, cover a period when the immigrant was not yet prominent enough to warrant more than passing attention. Thereafter there is no complete record of the city government, except between 1826 and 1828, when Bowen's Boston News-Letter and City Record, edited by J. V. C. Smith, chronicled its affairs. The Auditor's Reports (1813- 67) contain the financial details of all the municipal institutions, the Inaugural Addresses of the Mayors of Boston . . . Published by the City Registrar (Boston, 1894) give a cross section of the city's problems, and the changes in its laws may be traced in Peleg W. Chandler's Charter and Ordinances of the City of Boston together with the Acts of the Legislature Relating to the City . . . . (Boston, 1850) and in the City Council's compilation of ordinances in 1856 and 1865. The manuscript records of the town Board of Health (1799-1824) are preserved in the Boston Public Library, but the
257
NOTE ON SOURCES
reports of other city departments are scattered and fragmentary until 1839 when they began to be issued serially in the Boston City Documents. The annual reports of the agencies there collected be- came progressively more important as the aliens assumed greater prominence in the city's life.
It was the STATE, however, that was most prominently concerned with immigrants in this period. Its public DOCUMENTS throw wel- come light upon the process of settlement, and in addition possess a wealth of data on all aspects of Boston life. The reports of the State departments were thrown haphazardly into either the Massachusetts House Documents or the Massachusetts Senate Documents between 1826 and 1856 but thereafter were collected in the Massachusetts Public Documents while the two older series were confined to purely legislative concerns. The reports of the State Board of Education, of the Alien Passenger Commissioners, of the State charitable insti- tutions, and of the keepers of jails, included in these documents, were of prime importance.
Although the Acts and Resolves of the General Court are avail- able in full throughout the period, the proceedings were printed only under special circumstances as in 1856 when interest in the Know- Nothing legislature induced the Daily Advertiser to issue a volume of Debates and Proceedings. . .. (Boston, 1856).
The only FEDERAL DOCUMENTS directly relevant are the annual Letter from the Secretary of State Transmitting a Statement of Pas- sengers Arriving in the United States . . (1820 ff.) in the Congres- sional documents (cf. supra, 248); the reports of the national Commissioner of Immigration did not begin until 1865.
In a somewhat special category is the BRITISH CONSULAR COR- RESPONDENCE (P.R.O.) in two series (F.O. 4, F.O. 5). The letters of the English consuls in Boston to their government and to the Embassy in Washington (British Embassy Archives [P.R.O., F.O. 115]) are of considerable value particularly after the 1830's when the early placemen were supplanted by Consuls Manners, Grattan, and Lousada. Their reports touched regularly not only upon the condition of the Irishmen, still theoretically British subjects, but also upon the whole range of social conditions in Boston, and offer intelligent and well-informed comments upon them. The reports of Consul Buchanan, at New York, are also worth consulting. He was intensely interested in the problems of emigration and persistently showered his complaining but helpless superiors in London with long, detailed reports which they found irrelevant, but which are mines of serviceable information.
Outside the run of normal government documents are a number of
258
NOTE ON SOURCES
REPORTS OF INVESTIGATIONS into some of the more pressing problems of the period. Perhaps the earliest was Theodore Lyman, Jr.'s brief report to the House of Representatives on Free Negroes and Mulat- toes ... January 16, 1822 . . . (s.l., n.d.). As immigration grew such inquiries became more frequent. In 1846 public-spirited citizens, disturbed by the possibilities of a shortage in housing, prepared the Report of the Committee on the Expediency of Providing Better Tenements for the Poor (Boston, 1846). Interest in the causes of cholera provoked the exhaustive analysis by Buckingham's Commit- tee of 1849 into all phases of the city's health and the factors condi- tioning it (detailed in Report of the Committee of Internal Health on the Asiatic Cholera ... , Boston City Documents, 1849, no. 66, and discussed in William Read's "Communication . .. on the Asiatic Cholera ... 1866," Boston City Documents, 1866, no. 21). Al- though these reports and Dr. Howard F. Damon's Localities of One Thousand Cases of ... Diseases ... (Boston, 1866), contain some illuminating material, the most accurate descriptions of hous- ing conditions are found in the early Annual Reports (1870-1880) of the Massachusetts State Labor Statistics Bureau, based on investi- gations made in 1866-67, but valid for the whole period after 1850. The Massachusetts Sanitary Commissioners under Shattuck issued a Report of a General Plan for the Promotion of Public and Personal Health. . .. (Boston, 1850), summarized in "Sanitary Reform," North American Review, July, 1851, LXXIII, which contained an excellent statistical section on the health of the city. The Sanitary Condition of Boston, the Report of a Medical Commission . . . ap- pointed by the Board of Health of the City of Boston. . . . (Boston, 1875) by Chas. E. Buckingham and others, had some useful historical data. Finally, the Annual Reports of the Executive Committee of the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches (1835-1866) and of the Children's Mission to the Children of the Destitute (1850-1863) described the findings of two organizations in close contact with the immigrants.
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