ABSTRACT
The change in nomenclature from “Federalist aristocracy” and “Boston Associates,” which were political and business terms, respectively, to the more general “Boston Brahmins” signified the attainment of class stature as well as class distinction. In Boston industrial entrepreneurship and the formation of special financial institutions were integral to the process of accumulation, and these in turn provided the resilience and continuity necessary to durable class status. Morison and Tyack see it largely as a laboratory for innovations in curriculum and pedagogy, most of them abortively progressive, able only to anticipate the superior academic days to come. Nathaniel Bowditch, who served on the Corporation from 1826 to 1838, was, like Quincy, “a man of great order and system,” a great mathematician whose “habits of accurate calculation and rigid method” made him a navigational expert, an engineering consultant, and the first actuary of the Massachusetts Hospital Life.
