Boston was founded on November 17, 1630,
by Puritan colonists from England, on a peninsula called Shawmut by its
original Native American inhabitants. The peninsula was connected to the
mainland by a narrow isthmus, and surrounded by the waters of
Massachusetts Bay and the Back Bay, an estuary of the Charles River.
Boston's early European settlers first called the area Trimountaine. They
later renamed the town for Boston, England, in Lincolnshire, from which
several prominent "pilgrim" colonists emigrated. A majority of Boston's
early citizens were Puritans. Massachusetts Bay Colony's original
governor, John Winthrop, gave a famous sermon entitled "a City upon a
Hill," which captured the idea that Boston had a special covenant with
God. (Winthrop also led the signing of the Cambridge Agreement which is
regarded as a key founding document of the city.) Puritan ethics molded an
extremely stable and well-structured society in Boston. For example,
shortly after Boston's settlement, Puritans founded America's first public
school, Boston Latin School (1635), and America's first college, Harvard
College (1636). Hard work, moral uprightness, and an emphasis on education
remain part of Boston's culture. Until the 1760s, Boston was America's
largest, wealthiest, and most influential city.
During the early
1770s, British attempts to exert control on the thirteen colonies,
primarily via taxation, prompted Bostonians to initiate the American
Revolution. The Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and several early
battles occurred in or near the city, including the Battle of Lexington
and Concord, Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston. During this
period, Paul Revere made his famous midnight ride.
After the
Revolution, Boston quickly became one of the world's wealthiest
international trading ports because it was the closest major American port
to Europe — exports included rum, fish, salt, and tobacco. During this
era, descendants of old Boston families became regarded, in the American
popular mind, as the nation's social and cultural elites; they were later
dubbed the Boston Brahmins. In 1822, Boston was chartered as a city. By
the mid-1800s, the city's industrial manufacturing overtook international
trade in economic importance. Until the early 1900s, Boston remained one
of the nation's largest manufacturing centers, and was notable for its
garment production, leather goods, and machinery industries. A network of
small rivers bordering the city and connecting it to the surrounding
region made for easy shipment of goods and allowed for a proliferation of
mills and factories. Later, an even denser network of railroads
facilitated the region's industry and commerce. From the
mid-to-late-nineteenth century, Boston flourished culturally — it became
renowned for its rarefied literary culture and lavish artistic patronage.
It also became a center of the abolitionist movement.
In the
1820s, Boston's ethnic composition began to change dramatically with the
first wave of European immigrants. Groups like the Irish and Italians
moved into the city and brought with them Roman Catholicism. (This trend
of immigration continued throughout the 1800s - most famously when the
Potato Famine hit Ireland.) Currently, Catholics make up Boston's largest
religious community and since the early 20th century the Irish have played
a major role in Boston politics.
Boston in 1772 and 1880.
The original area of the Shawmut Peninsula was substantially
expanded by landfill. Between 1630 and 1890, the city tripled its
physical size by land reclamation, specifically by filling in
marshes, mud flats, and gaps between wharves along the waterfront, a
process Walter Muir Whitehill called "cutting down the hills to fill
the coves." The largest reclamation efforts took place during the
1800s. Beginning in 1807, the crown of Beacon Hill was used to fill
in a 50-acre mill pond that later became Haymarket Square (just
south of today's North Station area).
The present-day State
House sits atop this shortened Beacon Hill. Reclamation projects in
the middle of the century created significant parts of the South
End, West End, Financial District, and Chinatown. |
Scolley Square,
1880's |
After The Great Boston Fire of 1872, workers used building rubble as
landfill along the downtown waterfront. Boston's Back Bay land reclamation
project proved dramatic. During the mid-to-late 19th century, workers
filled almost 600 acres of brackish Charles River marshlands west of the
Boston Common with soil brought by rail from the hills of Needham Heights.
Boston also annexed the adjacent communities of East Boston, Dorchester,
South Boston, Brighton, Allston, Hyde Park, Roxbury, West Roxbury, Jamaica
Plain and Charlestown.
By the early and mid-20th century, the city was in decline as factories
became old and obsolete, and businesses moved out of the region for
cheaper labor elsewhere. Boston responded by initiating various urban
renewal projects, including the demolition of the old West End
neighborhood and the construction of Government Center.
In the
1970s, Boston boomed after thirty years of economic downturn, becoming a
leader in the mutual fund industry
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History of Boston,
MA