Elite Families: Class and Power in Nineteenth-Century BostonThis book maps the development of a regional elite and its persistence as an economic upper class through the nineteenth century. Farrell's study traces the kinship networks and overlapping business ties of the most economically prominent Brahmin families from the beginning of industrialization in the 1820s to the early twentieth century. Archival sources such as genealogies, family papers, and business records are used to address two issues of concern to those who study social stratification and the structure of power in industrializing societies: in what ways have traditional forms of social organization, such as kinship, been responsive to the social and economic changes brought by industrialization; and how active a role did an early economic elite play in shaping the direction of social change and in preserving its own group power and privilege over time. |
Contents
FAMILY AND ECONOMY | 7 |
THE SETTING OF BRAHMIN BOSTON | 21 |
KINSHIP NETWORKS AND ECONOMIC ALLIANCES | 39 |
KINKEEPING AND MARRIAGE TIES THE DOMESTIC SIDE OF KINSHIP NETWORKS | 77 |
PATTERNS OF ECONOMIC CONTINUITY | 115 |
KINSHIP AND CLASS INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY | 153 |
CONCLUSION | 163 |
GENEALOGICAL CHARTS OF THE LOWELLS LAWRENCES APPLETONS AND JACKSONS | 169 |
LOWELL GENEALOGY | 170 |
LAWRENCE GENEALOGY | 173 |
APPLETON GENEALOGY | 176 |
JACKSON GENEALOGY | 177 |
NOTES | 179 |
| 209 | |
| 225 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Abbott Lawrence American Amos Amos Lawrence Anna Sears Amory Augustus Lowell Back Bay Boston Associates Boston Brahmins Boston elite Boston families Boston Manufacturing Boston upper class Brahmin families Cambridge career Charles Charles Russell Lowell City of Boston cohort companies corporate cultural d'Hauteville daughter directorships Directory of Directors early nineteenth century economic continuity economic elite economic upper class Elizabeth Ellen established expanded family's financial intermediaries Francis Cabot Lowell Genealogy Harvard University Harvard University Press Hetty Higginson History Hospital Life Insurance Ibid important individual Institution for Savings institutional affiliations intermarriage investment Jaher James Jackson John Amory Lowell kinship network Lawrence and Appleton Lowell kin network marriage married Massachusetts Hospital MHLIC Nathan Appleton nineteenth-century Boston nomic organization Patrick Tracy Jackson pattern period political position Provident Institution role Samuel Lawrence social class sons sons-in-law sphere structure Suffolk Bank textile industry tion wealth William women York
Popular passages
Page 2 - And this is good old Boston, The home of the bean and the cod, Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots And the Cabots talk only to God.