Boston Brahmin

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The Boston Brahmin or Boston elite are members of Boston's traditional upper class. They form an integral part of the historic core of the East Coast establishment, along with other wealthy families of Philadelphia, New York City, Virginia and Charleston. They are often associated with the distinctive Boston Brahmin accent, Harvard University, Protestantism and traditional Anglo-American customs and clothing. Descendants of the earliest English colonists, such as those who came to America on the Mayflower or the Arbella, are often considered to be the most representative of the Boston Brahmins.

The term was coined by the physician and writer Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., in an 1860 article in the Atlantic Monthly. The term Brahmin refers to the highest ranking caste of people in the traditional caste system in India. In the United States, it has been applied to the old, wealthy New England families of British Protestant origin which were influential in the development of American institutions and culture.

The term effectively underscores the strong conviction of the New England gentry that they were a people set apart by destiny to guide the American experiment as their ancestors had played a leading role in founding it. The term also illustrates the erudite and exclusive nature of the New England gentry as perceived by outsiders, and may also refer to their interest in Eastern religions, fostered perhaps by the impact in the 19th century of the transcendentalist writings of New England literary icons such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, and the enlightened appeal of Universalist Unitarian movements of the same period.

Video Boston Brahmin

Characteristics

The nature of the Brahmins is hinted at by the doggerel "Boston Toast" by Holy Cross alumnus John Collins Bossidy:

And this is good old Boston,

The home of the bean and the cod,

Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,

And the Cabots talk only to God.

While some 19th-century Brahmin families of large fortune were of bourgeois origin, still fewer were of a somewhat aristocratic origin. The new families were often the first to seek, in typically British fashion, suitable marriage alliances with those old aristocratic New England families that were descended from landowners in England to elevate and cement their social standing. The Winthrops, Dudleys, Saltonstalls, Winslows, and Lymans (descended from English magistrates, gentry, and aristocracy) were, by and large, happy with this arrangement. All of Boston's "Brahmin elite", therefore, maintained the received culture of the old English gentry, including cultivating the personal excellence that they imagined maintained the distinction between gentlemen and freemen, and between ladies and women. They saw it as their duty to maintain what they defined as high standards of excellence, duty, and restraint. Cultivated, urbane, and dignified, a Boston Brahmin was supposed to be the very essence of enlightened aristocracy. The ideal Brahmin was not only wealthy, but displayed what was considered suitable personal virtues and character traits.

The Brahmin was expected to maintain the customary English reserve in his dress, manner, and deportment, cultivate the arts, support charities such as hospitals and colleges, and assume the role of community leader. Although the ideal called on him to transcend commonplace business values, in practice many found the thrill of economic success quite attractive. The Brahmins warned each other against avarice and insisted upon personal responsibility. Scandal and divorce were unacceptable. The total system was buttressed by the strong extended family ties present in Boston society. Young men attended the same prep schools, colleges, and private clubs, and heirs married heiresses. Family not only served as an economic asset, but also as a means of moral restraint. Most belong to the Unitarian or Episcopal churches, although some were Congregationalists or Methodists. Politically they were successively Federalists, Whigs, and Republicans. They were marked by their manners and once distinctive elocution, the Boston Brahmin accent, a version of the New England accent. Their distinctive Anglo-American manner of dress has been much imitated and is the foundation of the style now informally known as preppy. Many of the Brahmin families trace their ancestry back to the original 17th- and 18th-century colonial ruling class consisting of Massachusetts governors and magistrates, Harvard presidents, distinguished clergy and fellows of the Royal Society of London (a leading scientific body), while others entered New England aristocratic society during the 19th century with their profits from commerce and trade, often marrying into established Brahmin families.

Maps Boston Brahmin

Brahmin families

Adams

Adams Family

Samuel Adams (1722-1803): Founding Father
John Adams (1735-1826): Founding Father and second President of the United States, husband of Abigail Smith Adams (1744-1818)
- John Quincy Adams (1767-1848): sixth President of the United States
  - Charles Francis Adams, Sr. (1807-1886): Ambassador, U.S. congressman
    - Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (1835-1915): Civil War general
    - John Quincy Adams II (1833-1894): lawyer, politician
      - Charles Francis Adams III (1866-1954): U.S. Secretary of the Navy
        Charles Francis Adams IV (1910-1999): industrialist, first president of Raytheon
    - Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918): author
    - Brooks Adams (1848-1927): historian
Ivers Whitney Adams (1838-1914): founder of the oldest continuously playing professional baseball team, the Boston Red Stockings

Amory

Amory Family

John Amory Lowell (1798-1881): merchant
Thomas Coffin Amory (1812-1889): lawyer, author
Thomas Jonathan Coffin Amory (1828-1864): Civil War general
Ernest Amory Codman (1869-1940): surgeon
Cleveland Amory (1917-1998): author

Appleton

Appleton Family

Patrilineal line:

Daniel Appleton (1785-1849): publisher
Frances Appleton (d. 1861): wife of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
George Swett Appleton (1821-1878): publisher
Jane Means Appleton Pierce (1806-1863): wife of U.S. President Franklin Pierce, was First Lady of the United States from 1853 to 1857
Jesse Appleton (1772-1819): second president of Bowdoin College
John Appleton (1816-1864): assistant Secretary of State, diplomat, U.S. congressman
John Appleton: Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court
John F. Appleton (1838-1870): lawyer and Union colonel in the American Civil War
John James Appleton (1789-1864): ambassador
Nathan Appleton (1771-1861): U.S. congressman and merchant
Nathaniel Appleton (1693-1784): Congregational minister
Samuel Appleton (1625-1696): military and government leader in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay
Samuel Appleton (1766-1853): merchant and philanthropist
Thomas Gold Appleton (1812-1884): writer and art patron
William Appleton (1786-1862): U.S. congressman
William Henry Appleton (1814-1899): publisher
William Sumner Appleton (1874-1947): philanthropist

Other notable relatives:

Thomas Storrow Brown (1803-1888): journalist, writer, orator, and revolutionary in Lower Canada (present-day Quebec)
Edward Augustus Holyoke (1728-1829): educator and physician
Alice Mary Longfellow (1850-1928): philanthropist and preservationist
Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow (1845-1921): artist
Alpheus Spring Packard (1839-1905): entomologist and palaeontologist
William Alfred Packard (1830-1909): classical scholar
Charles Storrow Williams (1827-?): Director of Railroad Transportation for the Confederate States of America
Edward H. Williams (1824-1899): physician and railroad executive

Bacon

Bacon Family

Robert Bacon (1860-1919): U.S. Secretary of State
- Robert L. Bacon (1884-1938): U.S. congressman
- Gaspar G. Bacon (1886-1947): politician
  - Gaspar G. Bacon, Jr. (1914-1943): actor

Bates

Bates family

Originally from Boston and Britain:

Benjamin Bates I (c.1651-1710); merchant banker, family patriarch
Benjamin Bates II (c.1716 - 1820); member of the Hell Fire Club, revolutionary
Frederick Bates (1777-1825); politician
James Woodson Bates (1788-1846); judge
Joshua Bates (financier); Barings Bank partner, managed many Brahmin family fortunes, advised Adams family on Court protocol
Edward Bates (1793-1869); U.S. Attorney General
Benjamin Bates IV (1808-1878); philanthropist, namesake and benefactor of Bates College

Boylston

Boylston Family

Thomas Boylston (b. 1644): doctor, family patriarch
Zabdiel Boylston (1679-1766): physician
Ward Nicholas Boylston (1747-1828): benefactor, Harvard University

Bradlee

Bradlee Family

Direct line:

Nathan Bradley I: earliest known member born in America, in Dorchester, Boston, Massachusetts, in 1631
Samuel Bradlee: constable of Dorchester, Massachusetts
- Nathaniel Bradlee: Boston Tea Party participant, member of Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association
- Josiah Bradlee I: Boston Tea Party participant; m. Hannah Putnam
  - Josiah Bradlee III (Harvard): m. Alice Crowninsheld
  - Frederick Josiah Bradlee I (Harvard): Director of the Boston Bank
    - Frederick Josiah Bradlee, Jr. (Harvard-1915): on the first All-American football team at Harvard; m. Chevalier Josephine de Gersdorff
      - Frederick Josiah Bradlee III: Broadway actor, author
      - Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee (1921-2014) (Harvard-1942): Chief Executive Editor of The Washington Post
- Joseph Putnam Bradlee (1783-1838), Commander of the New England Guards, chairman of the State Central Committee, Director and then President of the Boston City Council
- Samuel Bradlee, Jr.: lieutenant colonel during the American Revolutionary War
- Thomas Bradlee: Boston Tea Party participant; member of Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association; Member of the St. Andrews Lodge of Freemasons
- David Bradlee: Boston Tea Party participant; Captain in the Continental Army, member of the St. Andrews Lodge of Freemasons
- Sarah Bradlee: "Mother of the Boston Tea Party"

Cabot

Chaffee/Chafee

Chaffee Family

Originally of Hingham, Massachusetts:

Thomas Chaffee (1610-1683), businessman and landowner
Jonathon Chaffee (1678-1766), businessman and landowner
Matthew Chaffee (1657-1723), Boston landowner
Adna Romanza Chaffee (1842-1914): U.S. general
Adna R. Chaffee, Jr. (1884-1941): U.S. general
Zechariah Chafee (1885-1957): philosopher, civil libertarian
John Chafee (1922-1999): U.S. senator
Lincoln Chafee (b. 1953): former U.S. senator, former Rhode Island governor, 2016 U.S. presidential candidate for the Democratic party

Choate

Choate Family

Rufus Choate (1799-1859): U.S. senator
George C. S. Choate (1827-1896): founder of Choate Sanitarium, Pleasantville, New York
Joseph Hodges Choate (1832-1917): lawyer, diplomat
William Gardner Choate (1830-1920): U.S. federal judge, founder of Choate Rosemary Hall
Sarah Choate Sears (1858-1935): art patron
Robert B. Choate, Jr. (1924-2009): businessman
Elizabeth Choate Spykman (1896-1965): writer
Nathaniel Choate (1899-1965): artist, sculptor

Coffin

Coffin Family

Originally of Newbury and Nantucket:

Tristram Coffin (1604-1681): colonist, original owner of Nantucket
William Coffin (1699-1775): merchant, co-founder of Trinity Church
Sir Isaac Coffin (1759-1839): naval officer
Charles E. Coffin (1841-1912): industrialist, U.S. congressman
Charles A. Coffin (1844-1926): industrialist, co-founder of General Electric
Henry Coffin Nevins (1843-1892): industrialist
John Coffin Jones, Sr. (1750-1820): Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
- John Coffin Jones, Jr. (1796-1861): U.S. Minister to Hawaii
Thomas Coffin Amory (1812-1889): lawyer, author
Thomas Jonathan Coffin Amory (1828-1864): Civil War general

Coolidge

Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933): 30th President of the United States

T. Jefferson Coolidge (1831-1920): Financier, industrialist, and civic leader
- John Coolidge (1906-2000): businessman; son of U.S. President Calvin Coolidge
Archibald Cary Coolidge (1866-1928): educator
John Gardner Coolidge (1863-1936): U.S. ambassador
Charles A. Coolidge (1844-1926): U.S. Army general

Cooper

John Cooper (1609-1669): colonist
Samuel Cooper (1725-1783): clergyman
Samuel D. Cooper, Jr. (1750-1824): revolutionary
Samuel D. Cooper III (1778-1853): trade merchant
Priscilla Cooper Tyler (1816-1889): First Lady of the United States
Theodore Cooper (1839-1919): civil engineer
Frederic Taber Cooper (1864-1937): writer

Crowninshield

Crowninshield Family

Johann Casper Richter von Kronenscheldt: colonist
Jacob Crowninshield (1770-1808): U.S. congressman
- Arent S. Crowninshield (1843-1908): U.S. Navy admiral
Caspar Crowninshield (1837-1897): Union Army colonel
Benjamin William Crowninshield (1837-1892): Union Army colonel
Frederic Crowninshield (1845-1918): first president of the National Society of Mural Painters
Benjamin Williams Crowninshield (1772-1851): 5th U.S. Secretary of Navy
Frank Crowninshield (1872-1947): creator and editor of Vanity Fair
Bowdin Bradlee Crowninshield (1867-1948): American naval architect

Descendants by marriage:

William Crowninshield Endicott (1826-1900): 5th U.S. Secretary of War
Frederick Josiah Bradlee, Jr. (1892-1970): on the first All-American football team (from Harvard)
Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee (1921-2014): Editor-in-chief of The Washington Post
Quinn Crowninshield Bradlee (b. 1982): founder and CEO of FriendsOfQuinn.com

Cushing

Cushing Family

Originally of Hingham, Massachusetts:

Caleb Cushing (1800-1879): U.S. congressman and Attorney General
John Perkins Cushing (1787-1862): China trade merchant, investor
Thomas Cushing (1725-1788): statesman, revolutionary
William Cushing (1732-1810): U.S. Supreme Court justice
Harvey Cushing (1869-1939): neurosurgeon

Descendant by marriage:

Albert Cushing Read (1887-1967): naval officer

Dana

Dana Family

Richard Dana (1699-1772): colonial Boston politician
Francis Dana (1743-1811): revolutionary
Richard Henry Dana, Sr. (1787-1879): lawyer, author
Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (1815-1882): lawyer, author (Two Years Before the Mast)

Delano

Delano Family

Columbus Delano (1809-1896): U.S. Secretary of the Interior
Jane Delano (1862-1919): founder of the American Red Cross Nursing Service
Paul Delano (1745-1842): naval officer
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945): President of the United States
Frederic A. Delano (1863-1953): civic reformer and railroad president

Dudley

Dudley Family

Thomas Dudley (1576-1653): Governor of Massachusetts, a founder of Harvard College
Anne Dudley Bradstreet (1612-1672): first American poet, wife of Royal Governor Simon Bradstreet
Joseph Dudley (1647-1720): Royal Governor of Massachusetts, President of the Dominion of New England, Chief Justice of New York, Member of Parliament, Lt. Governor of the Isle of Wight
Paul Dudley (1675-1751): Chief Justice of Massachusetts, member of the Royal Society, founder of the Dudleian lectures at Harvard
Paul Dudley Sargent (1745-1828): Army colonel and Revolutionary War hero
Dudley Saltonstall (1738-1796): Naval commodore during the Revolution and successful privateer

Dwight

Dwight Family

Timothy Dwight IV (1752-1817): president of Yale University
Joseph Dwight (1703-1765): lawyer, French and Indian War veteran
James Dwight Dana (1813-1895): geologist

Eliot

Eliot Family

Charles William Eliot (1834-1926): president of Harvard University
- Charles Eliot (1859-1897): landscape architect
- Samuel A. Eliot II (1862-1950): president of the American Unitarian Association
Samuel Eliot Morison (1887-1976): maritime author
Theodore Lyman Eliot (1928-...), diplomat
Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908): author

Emerson

Emerson Family

Rev. William Emerson (1769-1811): clergyman; m. Ruth Haskins Emerson
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): poet; m. Lydia Jackson Emerson
  - Edward Waldo Emerson, (1844-1930)
    - Raymond Emerson, (1886-1977)

Endicott

Endicott Family

Salem:

William Crowninshield Endicott (1826-1900): U.S. Secretary of War

Dedham:

Augustus Bradford Endicott (1818-1910): politician
- - Philip Endicott Young (1885-1955): industrialist
- Henry Bradford Endicott (1853-1920): industrialist
  - Henry Wendell Endicott (1880-1954)
  - Bradford Maxwell Endicott: philanthropist (1926-

Fabens

Fabens Family

Of Marblehead and Salem:

William Fabens (1810-1883): lawyer, member of Assembly, Senate
- William Chandler Fabens (1843-1903): Lynn attorney, namesake of Fabens Building
Samuel Augustus Fabens (1813-1899): master mariner in the East India and California trade
Francis Alfred Fabens (1814-1872): mercantile businessman, San Francisco judge, attorney
Joseph Warren Fabens (1821-1875): U.S. Consul at Cayenne, businessman, Envoy Extraordinary of the Dominican Republic
George Wilson Fabens (1857-1939): attorney, land commissioner and superintendent of Southern Pacific Railroad, namesake of Fabens, Texas

Forbes

Forbes Family

John Murray Forbes (1813-1898): industrialist
Edward W. Forbes (1873-1969): Director of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University from 1909 to 1944.
John Forbes Kerry (b. 1943): United States Secretary of State, senator from Massachusetts (1985-2013)
Elliot Forbes (1917-2006): conductor and musicologist
Robert Bennet Forbes (1804-1889): sea captain, China merchant, ship owner, writer

Gardner

Gardner Family

Originally of Essex county:

Samuel Pickering Gardner (1767-1843): merchant
John Lowell Gardner (1808-1884): merchant
John Lowell Gardner II (1837-1898): merchant
Augustus P. Gardner (1865-1918): U.S. congressman

Gillett

Jonathan Gillett (1609-1677): colonist
Edward Bates Gillett (1817-1899): Attorney
- Frederick Huntington Gillett (1851-1935): 37th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
- Arthur Lincoln Gillett (1859-1938): clergyman

Healey/Dall

Mark Healey (1791-1872): originally of New Hampshire, merchant and first president of the Merchant's Bank
- Caroline Wells Healey (1822-1912), writer, feminist, and abolitionist
- Charles Henry Appleton Dall (1816-1886), first Unitarian minister to India
  - William Healey Dall (1845-1912), malacologist, paleontologist, and explorer of Alaska

Holmes

Holmes Family

Abiel Holmes (1763-1837): clergyman
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894): doctor, author
  - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935): U.S. Supreme Court justice

Jackson

Jackson Family

Edward Jackson (1708-1757): colonist; m. Dorothy Quincy Jackson
- Jonathan Jackson (1743-1810): merchant, revolutionary; m. Hannah Tracy Jackson
  - Charles Jackson (1775-1855): Massachusetts Supreme Court justice
    - Amelia Lee Jackson, who married Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. above
  - Patrick Tracy Jackson (1780-1847): co-founder of the Boston Manufacturing Company
  - Hannah Jackson: wife of Francis Cabot Lowell
Lydia Jackson: wife of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lawrence

Lawrence Family

Samuel Lawrence (d. 1827): revolutionary
- Amos Lawrence (1786-1852): merchant
  - Amos Adams Lawrence (1814-1886): abolitionist
    - William Lawrence (1850-1941): Episcopal bishop
      - William Appleton Lawrence (1889-1963): Episcopal bishop
      - Frederic C. Lawrence (1899-1989): Episcopal bishop
- Abbott Lawrence (1792-1855): U.S. congressman, founder of Lawrence, Massachusetts
- Luther Lawrence (d. 1839): politician

Descendant by marriage: Abbott Lawrence Lowell (1856-1943): president of Harvard University

Lodge

Lodge Family

John Ellerton Lodge, married Anna Cabot
- Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924): U.S. senator
  - George Cabot Lodge (1873-1909): poet
    - Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (1902-1985): U.S. senator, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
      - George Cabot Lodge II (b. 1927): Harvard Business School professor, 1962 U.S. Senate candidate from Massachusetts against Edward M. Kennedy
      - Henry Sears Lodge (b. 1930)
    - John Davis Lodge (1903-1985): 79th governor of Connecticut, U.S. ambassador

Lowell

Lyman

Richard Lyman (1580-1640): a founder of Hartford, Connecticut; cousin of Lord Mayor of London Sir John Lyman of the Lyman Baronets of England
Roswell Lyman: China trade merchant, had an interest in The Ann & Hope
Theodore Lyman (1753-1839): China trade merchant, commissioned Samuel McIntire to build one of New England's finest country houses, The Vale
Theodore Lyman II (1792-1849): brigadier general of militia, Massachusetts state representative, mayor of Boston
Theodore Lyman III (1833-1897): natural scientist, aide-de-camp to Major General Meade during the American Civil War, and United States congressman from Massachusetts
Theodore Lyman IV (1874-1954): director of Jefferson Physics Lab, Harvard; eponym of the Lyman series of spectral lines. The crater Lyman on the far side of the Moon is named after him, as is the Lyman Physics Building at Harvard.
George Williams Lyman (1786-1880): developed textile mills, director of the Boston and Lowell Railroad and the Columbian Bank, president of the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company. His first wife was Elizabeth Gray Otis, the daughter of Harrison Gray Otis (U.S. senator and mayor of Boston) and Sally Foster Otis, prominent Bostonians who built a noted Federal-style mansion still standing.
- - - Arthur T. Lyman (1832-1915), and his sisters Sarah (Mrs. Philip H. Sears) and Lydia (Mrs. Robert Treat Paine)
      - Arthur T. Lyman, Jr. (1861-1933): married Susan Cabot. Director and officer of textile manufacturing companies and the Massachusetts Life Insurance Company. Board member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Waltham Hospital. He was active in politics as president of the Democratic Club of Massachusetts, chairman of the State Democratic Committee.

Minot

Minot Family

Charles Sedgwick Minot (1852-1914): anatomist
George Richards Minot (1885-1950): winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine
Henry Davis Minot (1859-1890): ornithologist
Susan Minot (b. 1956): author

Norcross

Norcross Family

Original from Watertown, Massachusetts

Otis Norcross (1811-1882): mayor of Boston
Amasa Norcross (1824-1898): politician
Eleanor Norcross (1854-1923): artist

Otis

Otis Family

James Otis, Jr. (1725-1783): revolutionary
Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814): playwright, revolutionary
Samuel Allyne Otis (1740-1814): politician
Harrison Gray Otis (1765-1848): U.S. senator, mayor of Boston

Parkman

Parkman Family

Samuel Parkman (1751-1824): investor
George Parkman (1790-1849): philanthropist, victim of a highly publicized murder
Francis Parkman, Jr. (1823-1893): historian

Peabody

Peabody Family

Catherine Endicott Peabody (1808-1833)
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894): American educator who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States
Endicott Peabody (1857-1944): Episcopal priest and founder of the Groton School for Boys
Endicott "Chubb" Peabody (1920-1997): governor of Massachusetts
George Peabody (1795-1869): entrepreneur and philanthropist who founded the House of Morgan and the Peabody Institute
Joseph Peabody (1757-1844): merchant, shipowner, and philanthropist whose company sailed clipper ships in the Old China Trade from its base in Salem, Massachusetts
Mary Tyler Peabody Mann (1806-1887): American author
Nathaniel Peabody (1774-1855)
Richard R. Peabody (1892-1936): author of The Common Sense of Drinking, a major influence on Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson
Sophia Amelia Peabody Hawthorne (1809-1871): painter, illustrator, and wife of American author Nathaniel Hawthorne

Perkins

Perkins Family

James Perkins (1761-1822): founder of the Boston Athenaeum, pioneer of the China trade, merchant, philanthropist
Thomas Handasyd Perkins (1764-1854): merchant, philanthropist
Charles Perkins (1823-1886): art historian, philanthropist, founder of the Museum of Fine Arts
Edward Perkins (1856-1905): constitutional lawyer
Maxwell Perkins (1884-1947): literary editor of Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and F. Scott Fitzgerald

Phillips

Phillips Family

Christopher H. Phillips (1920-2008): politician and diplomat
Samuel Phillips, Jr. (1752-1802): politician, founder of Phillips Academy
John Phillips (1719-1795): educator, founder of Phillips Exeter Academy
John Sanborn Phillips (1861-1949): publisher of McClure's Magazine
Wendell Phillips (1811-1884): abolitionist
William Phillips (1878-1968): diplomat

Other notable relatives:

Phillips Brooks (1835-1893): American Episcopal clergyman and author
Samuel Phillips Huntington (1927-2008): Harvard Political Science Professor and Author; grandson of John Sanborn Phillips
Charles F. Brush (1849-1929): inventor and philanthropist
Bill Gates (1955-): billionaire software pioneer and philanthropist

Putnam

Putnam Family

James Putnam (1725-1789): last attorney general in Massachusetts before American Revolution; judge and politician in New Brunswick
James Putnam (1756-1838): Canadian politician
Israel Putnam (1718-1790): American army general during the Revolutionary War
William Lowell Putnam (1861-1924) and Elizabeth Lowell Putnam
- George P. Putnam (1887-1950): publisher, explorer, husband of Amelia Earhart
- Katherine L. Putnam (1890-1983): wife of Harvey Hollister Bundy
- Roger Lowell Putnam (1893-1972): politician, businessman

Quincy

Quincy Family

Edmund Quincy (1602-1636): settled in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1633
Josiah Quincy II (1744-1775): lawyer, revolutionary
- Josiah Quincy III (1772-1864): U.S. congressman, mayor of Boston, president of Harvard
Dorothy Quincy Hancock: wife of John Hancock
Abigail Smith Adams (1744-1818): wife of John Adams
- John Quincy Adams (1767-1848): President of the United States

Rice

Rice Family

Originally of Sudbury, Massachusetts:

Deacon Edmund Rice (1594-1663): colonist
Alexander Hamilton Rice (1818-1895): industrialist, mayor of Boston, governor of Massachusetts, U.S. congressman
- Alexander Hamilton Rice, Jr. (1875-1956): physician, geographer and explorer
Americus Vespucius Rice (1835-1904): general, U.S. congressman
Edmund Rice (1842-1906): U.S. Army general, Medal of Honor recipient
Edmund Rice (1819-1889): U.S. congressman
Henry Mower Rice (1816-1894): U.S. senator
Luther Rice (1783-1836): Baptist clergyman, missionary to India
Thomas Rice (1768-1854): U.S. congressman
William Marsh Rice (1816-1900): businessman, founder of Rice University
William North Rice (1845-1928): geologist, educator
William Whitney Rice (1826-1896): U.S. congressman
William B. Rice (1840-1909): industrialist, philanthropist

Saltonstall

Saltonstall Family

Leverett Saltonstall I (1783-1845): politician, educator
Leverett Saltonstall (1892-1979): U.S. senator
- William L. Saltonstall (1927-2009): politician
Philip Saltonstall Weld (1915-1984): World War II commando, environmentalist
William G. Saltonstall (1905-1989): 8th Principal of Phillips Exeter Academy

Sargent

Colonel Epes Sargent (1690-1762): colonel of militia before the Revolution and a justice of the general session court for more than 30 years
- Paul Dudley Sargent (1745-1828): Revolutionary officer, one of the founding overseers of Bowdoin College
  - Harrison Tweed (1885-1969): lawyer and civic leader
    - Tweed Roosevelt (1942-): great-grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt
- John Sargent (1750-1824): Loyalist officer during the American Revolution
  - Winthrop Sargent (1753-1820): patriot, governor, politician, and writer; member of the Federalist Party
  - Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820): feminist, essayist, playwright, and poet; her home is the Sargent House Museum
- Daniel Sargent, Sr. (1730-1806): merchant, owned Sargent's Wharf in Boston
  - Daniel Sargent (1764-1842): merchant, politician
    - Daniel Sargent Curtis (1825-1908): lawyer, banker, trustee of the BPL, owner of Palazzo Barbaro
  - Henry Sargent (1770-1845): painter and military man
  - Henry Winthrop Sargent (1810-1882): horticulturist and landscape gardener
  - Lucius Manlius Sargent (1786-1867): author, antiquarian, and temperance advocate
    - Horace Binney Sargent (1821-1908): Civil War general, politician
  - John Singer Sargent (1856-1925): artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation"
  - Charles Sprague Sargent (1841-1927): botanist, first director of Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum
  - Winthrop Sargent Gilman (1808-1884): head of the banking house of Gilman, Son & Co. in New York City
  - Epes Sargent (1813-1880): editor, poet and playwright
  - Francis W. Sargent (1915-1998): 64th governor of Massachusetts
  - Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee (1921-2014) (Harvard-1942): editor of The Washington Post
  - Frances Sargent Osgood (1811-1850): poet, one of the most popular women writers during her time
  - Anna Maria Wells (née Foster; ca. 1794-1868): early American poet and writer for children

Sears

Sears Family

Richard Sears (1610-1676): colonist
David Sears II (1787-1871): philanthropist, merchant, landowner
Clara Endicott Sears (1863-1960): author, philanthropist
Mason Sears (1899-1973): politician and ambassador
Emily Sears: wife of Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
John W. Sears (1930-2014): politician

Tarbox

Tarbox Family

John Tarbox (1645-1674): colonist
John K. Tarbox (1838-1887): U.S. congressman
Increase N. Tarbox (1815-1888): author

Thayer

Thayer Family

Sylvanus Thayer (1785-1872), United States general and Father of West Point
Nathaniel Thayer, Jr. (1808-1883): Financier, philanthropist. Partner in John E. Thayer and brother firm which he left to clerks Kidder and Peabody after his retirement. One of the most generous citizens of Boston donating Thayer hall to Harvard University. . He was an overseer of Harvard, 1866-1868, and a fellow, 1868-1875
Nathaniel Thayer, III (1851-1911): Capitalist and pioneer railroad promoter
Bayard Thayer (1862-1916): Millionaire sportsman, horticulturist.
Eugene Van Rensselaer Thayer (1855-1907): Financier and Capitalist
- Eugene Van Rensselaer Thayer, Jr. (1881-1937)Harvard class 1904. President of Merchants and Chase National Banks. Chairman of Stutz motorcars.
James Bradley Thayer (1831-1902), American legal writer and educationist
Ernest Thayer (1863-1940), American poet, author of "Casey at the Bat", and uncle of Scofield Thayer
Scofield Thayer (1889-1982), American poet and publisher
Eli Thayer (1819-1899), member of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts
John A. Thayer (1857-1917), member of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts
John R. Thayer (1845-1916), member of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts
John Milton Thayer (1820-1906), United States Senator and Civil War general
Webster Thayer (1857-1933), the judge at the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti
William Greenough Thayer (1863-1934), American educator
- Sigourney Thayer (1896-1944), theatrical producer, aviator, and poet

Thorndike

Thorndike Family

Israel Thorndike (1755-1832): merchant, politician
Augustus Thorndike (1896-1986): physician
George Thorndike Angell (1823-1909): lawyer, philanthropist

Tudor

Tudor Family

William Tudor (1750-1819): lawyer, politician, founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society
William Tudor (1779-1830): cofounder of the North American Review and the Boston Athenaeum
Frederic Tudor (1783-1864): Boston's "Ice King", founder of the Tudor Ice Company
Tasha Tudor (1915-2008): illustrator and author of children's books

Warren

Richard Warren (1578-1628): London merchant, Mayflower passenger
James Warren (1726-1808): Army general, paymaster of American Army, president of Massachusetts Congress
Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814): playwright, historian, revolutionary
Joseph Warren (1741-1775): major-general, hero/martyr of Bunker Hill, president of Massachusetts Congress, sent Paul Revere on his famous midnight ride
John Warren (1753-1815): founder of Harvard Medical School, surgeon at Bunker Hill, co-founder of the Massachusetts Medical Society
John Collins Warren (1778-1856): surgeon, gave first public demonstration of surgical anesthesia, a founder of The New England Journal of Medicine, president of the American Medical Association, founding dean of Harvard Medical School, and a founder of Massachusetts General Hospital
Winslow Warren (1838-1930): American attorney who served as Collector of Customs for the Port of Boston during the second administration of Grover Cleveland
John Collins Warren Jr. (1842-1927): surgeon and president of the American Surgical Association
Charles Warren (1868-1954): lawyer and legal scholar who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book The Supreme Court in United States History

Weld

Weld Family

Thomas Weld (born c. 1600): colonist, Puritan minister
William Gordon Weld (1775-1825): merchant
William Fletcher Weld (1800-1881): merchant, philanthropist
Ezra Greenleaf Weld (1801-1874): daguerreotypist
Theodore Dwight Weld (1803-1895): abolitionist
Stephen Minot Weld (1806-1867): politician, educator
George Walker Weld (1840-1905): philanthropist
Stephen Minot Weld, Jr. (1842-1920): Civil War general
Charles Goddard Weld (1857-1911): philanthropist
Isabel Weld Perkins (1877-1948): philanthropist
Philip Saltonstall Weld (1915-1984): World War II commando, environmentalist
Tuesday Weld (b. 1943): actress
William Weld (b. 1945): governor of Massachusetts, 2016 Libertarian Party Vice Presidential Candidate

Wigglesworth

Wigglesworth Family

Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705): colonist, clergyman
- Edward Wigglesworth (1693-1765): clergyman, educator
  - Edward Wigglesworth (1732-1794): academician
Richard B. Wigglesworth (1891-1960): U.S. congressman

Winthrop

Winthrop Family

John Winthrop (1588-1649): governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony
Lucy Winthrop Downing, mother of diplomat Sir George Downing, 1st Baronet, founder of New York, of Downing Street, London, and ultimately of Downing College, Cambridge UK. Lucy's letter to her brother Governor Winthrop provided the impetus for the founding of Harvard College.
- John Winthrop the Younger (1606-1676): governor of Connecticut
  - Fitz-John Winthrop (1637-1711): governor of Connecticut
John Winthrop: married Anne Dudley, granddaughter of Thomas Dudley
- John Winthrop (1714-1779): acting president of Harvard, pioneer of American science
  - James Winthrop (1752-1821), Librarian and jurist.
Thomas Lindall Winthrop (1760-1841): lieutenant governor of Massachusetts
Robert Charles Winthrop (1809-1894): lawyer, politician, philanthropist

That Boston Brahmin Look.Governor and Senator Leverett Saltonstall ...