|
Suffolk County, Mass.
Boston History
[source: Wikipedia.org]
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 |
|