Place Information
|
Boston is the capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1630, it is the largest city in New England. It has expanded throughout and beyond the Shawmut peninsula, and has become one of the oldest and most culturally significant cities in the United States. It is recognized as a global or world city. Boston was the location of several major events during the American Revolution, and was a major shipping port and manufacturing center. Today, the city is a center of higher education and health care. Its economy is also based on research, finance, and technology—principally biotechnology. Boston, with a city proper estimated population of 596,638 in 2005, lies at the center of America's eleventh largest metropolitan area known as Greater Boston, which is home to 4.4 million. Residents of the city are called Bostonians. History
Boston was founded on September 17, 1630, by Puritan colonists from England. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony are sometimes confused with the Pilgrims who founded Plymouth Colony ten years earlier on November 21, 1620, in what is today Bristol County, Plymouth County, and Barnstable County, Massachusetts. The two groups are historically distinct and differed in religious practice. The separate colonies were not united until 1691 with the formation of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Boston was established 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. Several prehistoric Native American archaeological sites excavated in Boston have shown the peninsula to have been inhabited as early as 5,000 BC. Boston's early European settlers first called the area Trimountaine; but later renamed the town after Boston, Lincolnshire, England, from which several prominent 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 Model of Christian Charity," 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. 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 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, a dense 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.
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 (20 ha) mill pond that later became Haymarket Square. 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, the Financial District, and Chinatown. After The Great Boston Fire of 1872, workers used building rubble as landfill along the downtown waterfront. During the mid-to-late 19th century, workers filled almost 600 acres (2.4 km²) of brackish Charles River marshlands west of the Boston Common with soil brought by rail from the hills of Needham Heights. In addition, the city annexed the adjacent towns of Roxbury (1868), Dorchester (1870), Brighton, West Roxbury, and Charlestown. The last three towns were annexed in 1874.
In the early 21st century, Boston has become a center of intellectual, technological, and political ideas. However, Boston has experienced a loss of regional institutions, which included the acquisition of the Boston Globe by The New York Times, and the loss to mergers and acquisitions of local financial institutions such FleetBoston Financial, which was acquired by Charlotte-based Bank of America in 2004. The city also had to tackle gentrification issues and rising living expenses, with housing prices' increasing sharply since the 1990s. In 2004, the Boston metropolitan area had the highest cost of living of any in the country, and Massachusetts was the only state to lose population. Research TipsBooks available online at Google BooksBoston Births from A.D. 1700 to A.D. 1800 Dorchester Births, Marriages, and Deaths to the End of 1825 Vital Records of the Town of Dorchester from 1826 to 1849 Boston Births, Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths, 1630-1699 The Memorial History of Boston: Including Suffolk County Early Boston Records: Aspinwall Notorial Records Boston Town Records, 1784 to 1796 Selectmen's Minutes from 1787 through 1798 The Pilgrims of Boston and Their Descendants - also inscriptions from the Granary Burial Ground History of the Old South Church (Third Church) Boston, 1669-1884 An Historical Catalogue of the Old South Church (Third Church) Boston The Manifesto Church: Records of the Church in Brattle Square, Boston
|
