History Of Boston Research Articles

Great Waters: A History of Boston's Water Supply. By Fern L. Nesson. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1983. Pp. ix, 106. $15.00.

Great Waters: A History of Boston's Water Supply. By Fern L. Nesson. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1983. Pp. ix, 106. $15.00.

Patrick J. Maguire: Boston's Last Democratic Boss

ONE of most remarkable and least-known political figures in history of Boston is Patrick J. Maguire, a prosperous real estate dealer and newspaper publisher. Over two stormy decades, from 1876 to 1896, he ruled Democratic City Committee, which in turn ran Boston. In a period of religious and social ferment, he melded Irish-Catholics with those of other backgrounds. Historian Geoffrey Blodgett has called Maguire the last city-wide boss in Boston's history.' Indeed, it might be argued that he was only city-wide boss Boston ever had. Maguire was a back-room operator. He held only one elective office, as governor's councillor, from 1883 through 1885, and one appointed position, for four years, as a member of Boston's Park Commission. He was president of Democratic City Committee for only three years, yet he directed that body for a generation. Maguire was a delegate to four Democratic national conventions, and largely because of his efforts and those of his friend Patrick A. Collins, Massachusetts delegation supported Grover Cleveland in 1884. Maguire predicted Cleveland's victory, and president proved a valuable friend in distribution of federal patronage in Boston. Maguire was born in County Monaghan, Ireland, on 5 December 1838. When still a small boy, he was taken to Prince Edward Island, Canada, where he later learned printer's trade. At fourteen he walked to Boston and found work in

Faneuil hall: Shrine of American oratory

This essay traces the history of Boston's Faneuil Hall as a major forum in American public address. A center of revolutionary oratory in colonial days, the hall has provided a prominent platform for speakers and issues to the present day. The building merits its reputation as the symbolic home of American rhetoric.

Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia; Two Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Class Authority and Leadership (review)

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES121 The glimpses that are afforded to Carey's quite extraordinary aunt, Hannah Whitall Smith, are significant in the final analysis of Miss Thomas' career situation as this book concludes the portrayal of the formative portion of her life. How effectively H. W. Smith influenced her headstrong niece in the period immediately preceding the opening of Bryn Mawr College is clearly shown in the publication of Smith's letter of advice to Carey Thomas and the carefully phrased but remarkably tactful yet confident letter which follows in which Miss Thomas offers her services to Dr. James E. Rhoads. Altogether these two portraits, the one of "Mr. Gummere" and the other of "Aunt Hannah," give a fresh new dimension to an appreciation of Carey Thomas. There is little doubt that in her childhood and young adult life Miss Thomas felt constrained by much that she had to accept in the particular Quaker milieu in which she grew up. The vigorous yet intemperate view which emerges in her comments and indeed strictures on the culture of Victorian Orthodox Quakerism in Baltimore prepares the reader for many struggles ahead to reach accommodation with the Quaker trustees who with her shared the fortunes of the nascent college. For specifics on these struggles , however, we cannot count on this volume, since it closes widi her triumphant return from abroad with valuable doctorate in hand, ready to take on the world of scholarship. In her long years of service to Bryn Mawr College, M. Carey Thomas maintained an increasingly tenuous relationship with the Society of Friends. This was done not from any sense of need for a religious framework for her own life, it seems clear, but rather from the practical realization that the aims of the founding Quaker, Joseph W. Taylor, as implemented by the Board of Trustees, must be respected, though subject to adaptation as time advanced. Intellectual excellence could not yield to any form of religious orthodoxy. Miss Thomas attended worship at Haverford Monthly Meeting on occasion, but never brought her membership there from Baltimore . Ultimately, she decided to formally resign from Baltimore Monthly Meeting and from the Society of Friends in 1927. Haverford, PennsylvaniaBarbara L. Curtis Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia; Two Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Class Authority and Leadership. By E. Digby Baltzell. New York, NY, The Free Press, 1979, xii+585 pp. $19.95. E. Digby Baltzell has written a book that uses the history of Boston and Philadelphia to make a point on leadership. He says that the United States needs leadership and has been losing it, nay, turning against it. He describes Boston as a place where it has been nurtured and Philadelphia as one where it has been stifled. He uses information mostly about the lives of Boston Brahmins and Proper Philadelphians but also includes passages on the lower rungs of the social ladder. One chapter, for instance, argues that Roman Catholicism in the two cities absorbed the traits of their upper classes. Professor Baltzell is a sociologist and after the manner of his kind leads off with theoretical propositions, mainly from Max Weber. They concern society, class, authority, the function of beliefs, and so forth, but not change 122QUAKER HISTORY or continuity over time. In brief, Baltzell is convinced that the beliefs and values people hold determine the character of their society and that the rich and powerful largely give the beliefs and values to the whole. He says that Puritanism spawned hierarchical, authoritarian, intellectual, and communal values, while Quakerism bred egalitarian, anti-authoritarian, antiintellectual , and individualist values; that these values shaped early Boston and Philadelphia, creating contrasting social syndromes. He presents evidence to show that they have persisted ever since. The qualities attributed to Puritanism produce "class authority," which means dominance of society by a group of leaders who are conscious of their collective position at die top of a hierarchy and imbued with a sense of responsibility to lead not only in economic and governmental power but also in all aspects of culture. They have class pride, pride in the public institutions they found and lead, pride in individual achievements that build lasting monuments of civilization. They enjoy the...

The Irish of South Boston

The people have a long history of being hostile to outsiders, wrote Louis Jaffe, Harvard law professor, about the inhabitants of Boston's South End. As a consultant to the Massachusetts Department of Education Jaffe urged that the impending federal court desegregation ruling exempt “Southie” from any busing plan. Jaffe's warnings went unheeded, and the buses rolled between the overwhelming black Roxbury ghetto and the neighboring, predominantly Irish South End, sparking an onslaught of racial violence one journalist described as “unparalleled in modern Boston history, a day of hatred against outsiders not witnessed here in decades.”

The Massachusetts Convention of Towns, 1768

N 1934 John C. Miller published standard account of Massachusetts Convention of I768, extraordinary meeting of town delegates called at Boston's request. Miller argued that though its promoters failed in their immediate aim of raising resistance to landing of British troops, this was nonetheless an important milestone in history of Boston's gradual domination of New England. For even though Massachusetts towns rejected the path of open resistance, they did respond to Boston's invitation to extralegal convention, participating in a de facto assembly of House of Representatives called by town of Boston, not governor. In absence of any minutes or firsthand descriptions of convention, Miller was forced to rely on its brief public record, supplemented by sketchy secondhand accounts of royal officials and Reverend Andrew Eliot. Miller did not know precisely what went on in convention, or who participated; therefore his conclusions, however plausible, have remained tentative.' Since I934, however, more information has come to light. In early I950's Robert J. Taylor discovered a list of delegates prepared by a participant, Robert Treat Paine, then of Taunton. As a result Taylor was able to sketch character of provincial response in more detail. But since he was primarily interested in behavior of Hampshire and Berkshire counties, Taylor did not attempt a thorough reassessment of Miller's interpretation in light of Paine's list. He did, however, dispute Miller's view of radicals' expectations, concluding that convention's performance could not have surprised Samuel Adams.2

A Report on Spasmodic Cholera: Prepared by a Committee Under the Direction of Counsellors of the Massachusetts Medical Society

Medical furor bordering on panic used to occur in the 1830's and at various periods before this during violent epidemics of Asiatic cholera which spread through Europe, England, parts of the British Isles, and then in epidemic waves invaded the seaboard and inland rivers of the United States. It so agitated the good burghers of Boston that the Counsellors of the Massachusetts Medical Society in February, 1932, decided they should collect what information was available from detailed reports of Asiatic, Indian, Continental European, and British sources. These were condensed, collated, and issued in a report of a commitee containing, among others, James Jackson and John C. Warren, notable medical figures in the notable medical history of Boston. It is interesting to compare this book which is really a collection of essays and medical reports rather than a critique or a critical commentary with Daniel Drake's book published the same year,

Boston: A Topographical History.

THIS EDITION HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEWER EDITION In this urbane and delightful book, Walter Muir Whitehill follows the course of Boston's history, describing the changing face of the city and the society that changed with it, through more than three hundred years. This edition includes a chapter describing the major changes of the city since 1958, as well as new pictures. Generously illustrated, written with a knowledge of and affection for a great city that are visible on every page, this book speaks equally to those who know Boston well and those who are discovering the city for the first time.

A History of Boston's Oldest Bank

The Harvard University Press has just published a history of The Massachusetts-First National Bank, 1784–1934, by N. S. B. Gras, Professor of Business History at the Harvard School of Business. This, the fourth work to appear in the series entitled Harvard Studies in Business History, has been made available to members of the Society through the generosity of the First National Bank of Boston.

A History of Boston's Oldest Bank

A History of Boston's Oldest Bank

A round metal object from Boston, Lincs.

In the course of the restoration in 1853 of the great church of St. Botolph at Boston in Lincolnshire the floor of the nave was removed and excavation took place with a view to determining the site of a more ancient church thought to have existed before the great nave was built. In the course of these works certain small objects were discovered in the ground, and a list of them is given in the History of Boston by Pishey Thompson, Boston, 1856. One of them, which is preserved in the library over the south-west porch, is a copper disc with Limoges champlevé enamel. It was exhibited before the Society at its ordinary meeting on the 30th January 1930 by the vicar of Boston, the Rev. Canon Hutchinson, at my invitation, as it had attracted my attention when I visited the library in June 1929. It is represented on pl. XIII, and Mr. Thompson, who considered it not of much interest, describes it as the foot of a candlestick of latten with shields of arms and foliage of the fourteenth century. It is possible to differ with him as to the interest of the object, for that appears to be quite considerable. As to its date, it is probably quite early in the fourteenth century, if not at the end of the thirteenth. As to its use, that must in any case be quite doubtful.

Post-Glacial History of Boston

Post-Glacial History of Boston

A Fragment of the Medical History of Boston

A Fragment of the Medical History of Boston