USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Boston's immigrants, 1790-1865 : a study in acculturation > Part 3
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" For Boston's relationship to these towns, cf. McCaffrey, op. cit., 147 ff., 170 ff .; "Report of Standing Committee on Towns ... ," Massachusetts Senate Documents, 1851, no. 82, pp. 2, 3, 9 ff .; Winsor, op. cit., III, 275, IV, 26, 41 ; D. Hamilton Hurd, History of Norfolk County . . . (Philadelphia, 1884), 72, 73; John Hayward, Gazetteer of Massachusetts , with a Great Variety of Other Useful Information (Revised Edition) (Boston, 1849), 41; P. Tocque, Peep at Uncle Sam's Farm, Workshop, Fisheries, &c. (Boston, 1851), 20. For the population of all these towns, cf. infra, Table II.
45 E. Mackenzie, Historical . .. View of the United States ... (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1819), 103.
46 Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, Tenth Annual Report of the Execu- tive Committee ... (Boston, 1844), 25.
47 [Hale], op. cit., 29; Van Wyck Brooks, Flowering of New England, 1815- 1865 (New York, 1936), II, n .; Wide Awake: and the Spirit of Washington
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SOCIAL BOSTON, 1790-1845
Beacon Hill or moved to the rural suburbs, Roxbury or Cam- bridge. The middle classes scattered in the South Cove, in South Boston or in the outskirts. Finally, large districts were available at low rents in the North and West Ends.
Accompanying the shift in neighborhoods was a change in housing. The homes of the upper classes still bore traces of the great flourishing of federal architecture, but the wider use of Quincy granite in the 1830's encouraged a Gothicism imi- tated from Europe, expressed chiefly in public buildings and churches, but also in pretentious and elaborate residences.48 The homes of the poor, however, remained unchanged. Small, generally of one story, and built of wood, with inflammable shingle roofs, they possessed few conveniences, but usually held not more than one or two families.49 Multiple dwellings were slow to develop because of the cheapness of land in less desir- able areas. The great tenement house, therefore, was unusual in Boston during this period. There were, of course, no sanitary provisions for the very poor. But, because of the avoidance of overcrowding and diligence in prevention of disease, living was not unhealthy.
Health protection, which enjoyed a tradition of long stand- ing, dating back at least to Cotton Mather's fight for inocula- tion, acquired a permanent form at the end of the eighteenth century. As a great seaport dealing with many parts of the world, Boston's most immediate need was for a quarantine against the importation of infectious diseases. However, the Board of Health, organized in 1798, acquired not only this authority, but also broad powers for protecting the city in- ternally.50 And soon the second function absorbed an ever larger share of the Board's attention; throughout the thirty years of its existence, it continued to cope with a host of sani- tary problems whose number and complexity increased with
(Boston), October 7, 1854; Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, Eleventh An- nual Report of the Executive Committee ... (Boston, 1845), 27.
48 Cf. Sándor Farkas, Útazás Észak Amerikában (Kolozsvar, 1834), 91.
49 William Priest, Travels in the United States . .. (Boston, 1802), 168.
50 Boston Board of Health, Records, 1799-1824 (MSS., B. P. L.), I.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
the growth of the city. In 1802 it helped spread the results of Jenner's work with smallpox vaccination. It regulated grave- yards and the burial of the dead.51 From rudimentary begin- nings in which contractors were hired to cart away rubbish, the Board developed a comprehensive system of garbage col- lection that served its purpose quite efficiently.52 It also en- couraged the elimination of the old cesspool method of drainage by the substitution of private systems of sewers, though public sewers had to await the inauguration of a new city govern- ment.53
The problem of supplying the community with a permanent, dependable and pure supply of water was not solved until the new municipal government took charge. Various makeshifts having failed, the authorities finally undertook the ambitious task of connecting a reservoir in Brookline with the waters of Lake Cochituate in Middlesex County, a project which, when completed in 1848, assured the people of their water for the next half century.54 These precautions reflected the desire of the citizens to make Boston a better and safer place to live in, and helped make it one of the healthiest of the nineteenth- century municipalities.
The expansion of functions necessitated the substitution in 1822 of a more efficient type of administration for the archaic town forms. Until that year, the town meeting determined public policy, theoretically at least. The Board of Selectmen, the only general administrative body, had comparatively little power, and no authority over other municipal agencies, which indeed often competed and quarrelled with one another.55
51 Rules, Regulations and Orders of the Boston Board of Health Relative to the Police of the Town . . . (s.l., 1821), 5, 6, 8-16; Boston Board of Health, Records, II.
52 Cf. Robert A. Woods, ed., Americans in Process ... (Boston, 1902), 74. 53 Rules, Regulations and Orders . . . , 2, 5, 6; and Board of Health Records, IV; also Joseph B. Egan, Citizenship in Boston . .. (Philadelphia, n.d. [1925]), 264; Woods, Americans in Process, 73.
54 Cf. [Theodore Lyman, Jr.], Communication to the City Council on the Subject of Introducing Water into the City ... (Boston, 1834), passim; Win- sor, op. cit., III, 252.
55 Cf., e.g., Boston City Council, Report of the Committee ... on the Powers ... of the Overseers .. . (Boston, 1825), 3 ff .; Winsor, op. cit., III, 221.
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SOCIAL BOSTON, 1790-1845
Earlier attempts at revision had been defeated by the forces of tradition, by incumbent office-holders, and by fears, per- sistently expressed, that the cost would be ruinously high. Nevertheless in 1822 the General Court granted a city charter under which Boston's first mayor immediately took office.56 Under Josiah Quincy, Jr., an efficient police force replaced the old system of watch and constable.57 But the vested interests in the fire department delayed by several years the introduc- tion of a modernized fire-fighting force. Although a series of disastrous fires, culminating in that of April 7, 1825, on Duane Street, made possible a reorganization, the reform was far from complete, and a volunteer element persisted in the com- panies until 1873.58
The solution of one urban problem - transportation - needed no external stimulation. The city always prided itself upon its well-built and lighted streets,59 but until the 1820's people either walked or made use of private conveyances. By 1826 traffic had become so heavy that several omnibus lines were established.60 The first ran every other hour to Roxbury and charged a fare of nine cents each way. Its success en- couraged two others from Boston to Charlestown and South Boston, and by 1845 some twenty lines carried the Bostonian about his business quickly and expeditiously.61 At the same
56 Winsor, op. cit., III, 218 ff .; James M. Bugbee, City Government of Boston (Johns Hopkins University Studies . .. Fifth Series, no. 3, Baltimore, 1887), 19 ff.
57 Edward H. Savage, Police Records and Recollections; or Boston by Day- light and Gaslight ... (Boston, 1873), 84, 94 ff.
58 Cf. Josiah Quincy, Municipal History of ... Boston ... (Boston, 1852), 160; Arthur Wellington Brayley, Complete History of the Boston Fire Depart- ment . . . (Boston, 1889), 144 ff., 149, 150 ff .; Boston City Documents, 1873, no. 97.
59 In this period, expenditures on streets rose from $30,000 in 1829 to $180,000 in 1847, on the fire department from $14,000 to $57,000, on constables from $1,500 to $55,000, and on lighting from nothing to $31,000 (Boston Common Council, "Annual Appropriations, 1846-47," Boston City Documents, 1846, no. 15, pp. 8 ff .; Josiah Quincy, Report of the Committee of Appropriations, Boston [Boston, 1828], 4, 5) .
60 For an estimate of the number of vehicles entering and leaving Boston, cf. Dissertation Copy, 36, n. 120; Bowen's Boston News-Letter and City Record, October 14, 1826.
61 For a list of these lines cf. Peleg W. Chandler, Charter and Ordinances of
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
time, railroads developed considerable local business, hackney coaches began to flourish, and a good ferry connected East Boston with the mainland. By 1847 more than 20,000 pas- sengers were carried in and out of the city daily.62
Bostonians were also awake to their responsibilities in solv- ing the social problems which beset the modern metropolis. Poverty and pauperism, usually the most pressing of these, were of no great importance during the period. Despite the limited opportunities for employment, few depended upon pub- lic or private benevolence. The population was small enough and the possibility of leaving broad enough for almost anyone to find work or depart. Consequently, pauperism was nearly unknown, and declining relative to the total population.63
What necessity there was for relief was met generously and competently by the municipality and private agencies. Since the state reimbursed the city for the support of those without legal residence, the city was not anxious to stint on expendi- tures for much of which it did not pay.64 The Board of Over- seers - a survival of the old town government - administered partial outdoor relief while the city controlled a system of in- stitutions including a House of Industry, a House of Juvenile Reformation (1826), and a municipal lunatic asylum (1839) that took care of those completely dependent. In addition, numerous religious and charitable societies whose objectives included not only the "improvement" of the "moral state of the poor and irreligious" but also the provision of aid and work
. . . Boston . .. with the Acts of the Legislature Relating to the City . . . (Boston, 1850), 68 ff .; cf. also Francis S. Drake, Town of Roxbury . . . Its History and Antiquities . . . (Boston, 1905), 51; Bowen's Boston News-Letter and City Record, February 25, April 29, 1826.
62 Cf. the timetables in George Adams, Brighton and Brookline Business Directory . .. (Boston, 1850), 20, 22, 24, 28; Chandler, op. cit., 64 ff .; Tocque, op. cit., 14; Nathaniel Dearborn, Boston Notions . .. (Boston, 1848), 221.
03 Lemuel Shattuck, Report to the Committee of the City Council . . . Census of Boston for .. . 1845 . . . (Boston, 1846), 113. Cf. also Sir Charles Lyell, A Second Visit to the United States of North America (London, 1849), I, 186; and the remarkable failure of expenditures on paupers to rise in Boston over a period of a quarter-century (cf. infra, Table III).
64 Dissertation Copy, 39 ff.
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SOCIAL BOSTON, 1790-1845
for the unemployed, supplemented public assistance.65 In either form relief was always ample enough to justify Miss Mar- tineau's conclusion, "I know no large city where there is so much mutual helpfulness, so little neglect and ignorance of the concerns of other classes." 66
Comparative freedom from poverty brought comparative freedom from lawlessness. The total number of crimes was small, and increased no faster than the population, a fact at- tested alike by casual travellers and the research of a trained penologist.67 Proportionally fewer persons were accused of wrong-doing than in either London or Paris, and the number sentenced for serious transgressions was about half that of Berlin during the same period. Only one Bostonian in sixty- four was brought before a police court in each year, and only one of 107 was convicted.68 Most of the crimes were not of a grave nature, more than half being misdemeanors arising out of drunkenness, a rather disturbing problem.69 Bostonians, like other Americans, were not sparing in their use of hard liquors, and though many were able to hold their drinks, by the 1830's drunkenness was widespread enough to beget a thriving temperance movement and numerous abstinence societies.70
Prostitution was the only other social problem of any im-
65 Cf., e.g., [John Gallison], Explanation of the Views of the Society .. . (Cambridge, 1825), 3; Leah Hannah Feder, Unemployment Relief in Periods of Depression . .. (New York, 1936), 20; Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, Act of Incorporation and By-Laws ... (Boston, 1859), 4.
66 Martineau, op. cit., II, 290; also the letter of Father Ambrose Manahan, Boston Pilot, April 19, 1851; Winsor, op. cit., IV, 647-649, 672 ff .; infra, Table III; Dissertation Copy, 39.
67 Cf. Table IV, infra ; D. B. Warden, Statistical, Political, and Historical Ac- count of the United States ... (Edinburgh, 1819), I, 304; "Report of the Attorney-General, 1834," Massachusetts House Documents, 1834, no. 4, p. II.
68 N. H. Julius, Nordamerikas sittliche Zustände nach eigenen Anschauungen in den Jahren 1834, 1835 und 1836 (Leipzig, 1839), II, 66, and Tables 2, 3, 9, 12.
69 Cf. Capt. Marryatt, A Diary in America with Remarks on Its Institutions (New York, 1839), 168; also Julius, op. cit., II, Table II.
70 Cf. "Report of the City Marshal," quoted in Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, Twelfth Annual Report of the Executive Committee . . . 1846 (Bos- ton, 1846), 15.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
portance. Its frequency seems surprising in view of the rela- tive absence of pauperism and the strict contemporary sexual code. But this was the period in which hundreds of New Eng- land farm girls were seeking work in the city. Many, failing to find places soon enough, drifted into the readiest alternative. Thus, a social worker pointed out "the State of Maine, in this manner, furnishes a large proportion of the abandoned females in our city." 71
On the whole, however, social conditions were exceedingly favorable. Though its sons and daughters might leave it, though its commerce might languish and its industry remain at the handicraft level, Boston was a comfortable and well-to-do city in which the people managed to lead contented and healthy lives.72 With the utmost confidence in himself, the Bostonian could look out upon the world with an unjaundiced and op- timistic eye.
This optimism was the result of more than mere personal well-being. It derived from the fundamental ideas and basic assumptions permeating the social and economic structure of the society. The self-assurance of the merchant-prince in his world suffused the community, engendering a sublime faith in "the perfection of the creation" and of man's role in it. Essen- tially this confidence was grounded in a complete reliance upon the efficacy of the human will and its power to transform nature and the world. "Nature is thoroughly mediate , said Emerson, "It offers all its kingdom to man as the raw material which he may mould into what is useful. Man is never weary of working it up . . . until the world becomes at last only a realized will, - the double of man." 73
71 Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, Twelfth Annual Report of the Execu- tive Committee . .. 1846 (Boston, 1846), 30. Cf. also Savage, Police Records and Recollections, 182; Boston Female Society for Missionary Purposes, A Brief Account ... with Extracts from the Reports ... (Boston, n.d.), 15, 16 ff.
72 Disease and epidemics were rare. Between 1811 and 1820 there were only six cases of smallpox, between 1821 and 1830, only seven. Thereafter the num- ber increased but was unusually large only in 1840 (cf. infra, 117).
73 Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature," Complete Works ... (Boston, 1903), I, 40.
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SOCIAL BOSTON, 1790-1845
In the world of nineteenth-century Bostonians one corollary followed automatically from this assumption: man not only could, but actually was, daily raising the world to an ever- loftier level. Where a few years before there had been only a series of mud flats, there was now a thriving, bustling city. By 1845, the docks sheltered steamers that had crossed the Atlantic, and news of far-flung investments began to arrive through the new medium of the telegraph. Every aspect of daily existence confirmed an already deep-rooted conviction of progress. And this conviction was not merely one of passive acceptance. Rather, it was intensely dynamic and aggressive, driving Bostonians into "the bright and beautiful sisterhood" of reform movements - temperance, prison discipline, women's rights, and other philanthropies, all rungs in the ladder leading to the ultimate, though imminent, perfectibility.74 Bostonians heard "the Gospel of To-Day" sound "the . . . assured hope of Perfect Society" 75 and
lived to the glory of God, with the definite public spirit which belongs to such life. They had ... absolute faith that God's Kingdom was to come, and . . . saw no reason why it should not come soon.76
Naturally, they were democrats.77 They gloried in the Con- stitution, valued its blessings, and hoped its principles would spread to all the peoples of the earth. They sympathized with the revolutionary struggles of the French, Greeks, Poles, Mag- yars, Italians, and Irish and, when they could, aided materially and generously.78 Nor did they find this attitude at all incom-
74 W. H. Channing, Gospel of Today, a Discourse ... at the Ordination of T. W. Higginson ... (Boston, 1847), II. For reforms, cf. Arthur B. Darling, Political Changes in Massachusetts, 1824-1848 . . . (New Haven, 1925), 157 ff .; Daily Evening Transcript, October 2, 1830; A. B. Hart, Commonwealth History of Massachusetts (New York, 1929), III, 518, IV, 273 ff.
75 Channing, op. cit., 26.
76 Edward Everett Hale, quoted in M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Holmes of the Breakfast Table (New York, 1939), 42.
77 Cf. Farkas, op. cit., 90, 102, 127.
78 Cf. Independent Chronicle, September 6, 1810; Elizabeth Brett White, American Opinion of France from Lafayette to Poincaré (New York, 1927), 86, 119; infra, 144, 145, 159; Hart, op. cit., IV, 116.
26
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
patible with the hegemony exercised by the propertied merchant class over politics within the city,79 for they believed that "property ... is the surface action of internal machinery, like the index on the face of a clock," 80 an external indication of worth and ability in a community where trade was "the pendulum" regulating "all the common and authorized ma- chinery of the place." 81 Accordingly, while Bostonians were interested in politics, they were content to leave its actual management to those who had the leisure and ability to devote to it. Indeed, an observer found,
The people here are a little aristocratical but . .. they dont trouble thereselves much about politics as money & business is their aim.82
To this democracy, education was a vital necessity. No visitor failed to notice the free school system of Massachusetts and the zeal with which learning was pursued throughout life.83 The popularity of lectures, evening schools, libraries, and, most striking of all, newspapers and periodicals, bore wit- ness to this intellectual activity. In 1826 Boston boasted twenty-eight periodicals.84 By 1848 the number had mounted to more than 120 with an aggregate circulation of more than a half-million.85
Currents from Europe perpetually expanded the educational process. An increasing number of Bostonians traveled abroad and brought back with them the new ideas that were upsetting the equilibrium of Metternich's continent. With Ticknor and Bancroft came a wave of thrilling concepts from Germany, while French and English contacts of long standing exercised
79 Cf. Morison, Maritime History, 24; Nathan Matthews, City Government of Boston (Boston, 1895), 171.
80 Emerson, op. cit., I, 37.
81 Theodore Parker, Sermon of the Moral Condition of Boston . . . (Boston, 1849), 4.
82 D. R. Burden to Thomas Russell, July 5, 1796, Russell Correspondence (MSS., T. C. D.), II. Cf. also Consul Manners to Lord Palmerston, June 10, 1832, British Consular Correspondence, F.O. 5/276, no. 10, p. 2.
83 Cf., e.g., Farkas, op. cit., 122.
84 Bowen's Boston News-Letter and City Record, April 15, 1826.
85 Dearborn, Boston Notions, 200, 201.
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SOCIAL BOSTON, 1790-1845
continuous influence, so that the young men who grew up in the thirties found themselves "married to Europa." 86 Few resented these imported ideas. Rather, they agreed with Ezra Gannett that,
Every packet ship ... brings ... the thought and feeling which prevail there, to be added to our stock of ideas and sentiments. We welcome each new contribution. We read and reprint foreign litera- ture, we copy foreign manners, we adopt the . . . rules of judgment which obtain abroad. This is natural. It is foolish to complain about it. Imitation is the habit of youth; we are a young people. . Hence we shall . . . for a long time ... receive from Europe a considerable part of our intellectual persuasions and our moral tastes. ... If I thought it would be of any use, I might suggest the importance of forming a character of our own in spite of the influences . . across the Atlantic. But it would be a vain undertaking, and perhaps it is not best. All that we can do is, to form a national character with the help of these influences.87
Indeed cosmopolitan currents had thoroughly transformed the puritan Bostonians whose chief prop, the old orthodoxy, had already been weakened by successive attacks from deism, unitarianism, universalism, and, finally, transcendentalism. Slowly, Bostonians became gentler and more gracious, and developed interests in a wide range of secular diversions. They had early evaded Hancock's interdiction of the theatre, first under the guise of "moral lectures" and then openly.88 The Handel and Haydn Society was formed in 1815, only five years after the Board of Selectmen had prohibited balls as "uncongenial to the habits and manners of the citizens of this
86 Archibald H. Grimke, Life of Charles Sumner ... (New York, 1892), 58 ff. Cf. also, Frank Luther Mott, History of American Magazines, 1850-1865 (Cambridge, 1938), 228, 229; infra, 128. For German influences cf. Brooks, op. cit., 191, 192; Darling, op. cit., 31; Henry Steele Commager, Theodore Parker (Boston, 1936), 45, 95 ff .; for French, Howe, op. cit., 36; and for English, Independent Chronicle, August 29, 18II; Lieut. Col. A. M. Maxwell, Run Through the United States . . . 1840 (London, 1841), I, 46.
87 Ezra S. Gannett, Arrival of the Britannia, a Sermon .. . Federal Street Meeting-House ... July 19, 1840 ... (Boston, 1840), 16, 17.
88 John Lambert, Travels through Lower Canada and the United States .. . 1806 ... (London, 1810), III, 118 ff .; Priest, op. cit., 157; Morison, Harrison Gray Otis, I, 37, 218 ff.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
place." 89 Through its agency and the aid of pioneer musicians, the taste for music was developed, leading to the flourishing concert life of the thirties.90
Bostonians of 1845 had outgrown breeches, satin waistcoats, buckled shoes, and many ideas; they more often drew dividends from Merrimac factories than from India ships. None the less, they were recognizable in their ancestors of 1790. For these changes had unfolded from the Boston of the past. There had been no disruption in the essential continuity of the city's history.
89 Cf. Independent Chronicle, January 4, 1810.
90 Cf. Winsor, op. cit., IV, 415 ff .; infra, 151; and the advertisements in Daily Evening Transcript, 1831, and Boston Musical Gazette . . . , May 2, 1838.
CHAPTER II
THE PROCESS OF ARRIVAL, 1790-1865
Behold the duteous son, the sire decayed, The modest matron, and the blushing maid, Forced from their homes, a melancholy train, To traverse climes beyond the western main, Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around, And Niagara stuns with thundering sound.1
CERTAINLY, prospective settlers who could be at all selective would pass Boston by in favor of its younger and relatively more flourishing sisters. For in this community there was no room for strangers; its atmosphere of cultural homogeneity, familiar and comforting to self-contained Bostonians, seemed rigidly forbidding to aliens. And above all, space was lacking. Boston offered few attractions in either agriculture or indus- try. Its commercial ranks were not broad enough to absorb the sons of its own merchant class, and the fields of retail trading and handicraft artisanry were limited. The constricted social and economic life of the city and the far greater op- portunities elsewhere, combined to sweep the currents of mi- gration in other directions.
From time to time isolated individuals did find their way to Boston, became residents and, being few in number, were readily absorbed by its vigorous culture. Scattered French, English, Scotch, Irish, Scotch-Irish, German, and Italian fam- ilies appeared throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. One could find enough natives of Switzerland, the Azores, Armenia, Poland, Sweden, Spain, China, and Russia to credit the claim that twenty-seven different languages were
1 "Native Poet," in "Traveller," as quoted in Hibernicus, Practical Views and Suggestions on the Present Condition . .. of Ireland ... (Dublin, 1823), 117.
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