How did they feel about science?
Generally speaking, the early Bostonians were deeply practical, and they therefore embraced the aspects of science that seemed likely to help them. There were occasions when they cut off their noses to spite their faces, however.
Bostonians feared two things more than anything else: death from fire and death from drowning. The town endured roughly six “great fires” between its founding and the 1750s. But in the 1720s, Boston experienced another great fear, and this one came from the appearance of smallpox. Dr. Zabdiel Boylston attempted to inoculate the population, and his methods clearly showed great efficacy, but many Bostonians rejected inoculation as a newfangled and dangerous business. Reverend Cotton Mather, who supported Dr. Boylston, spoke out loudly and often: as a result, someone threw a handmade bomb, or grenade, through his window!
What did the occasional English visitors think of Boston and its people?
John Josselyn and John Dunton penned the most noteworthy descriptions of Boston. Both men marveled at the industry of Bostonians and poked fun at the hidebound customs of the Puritans. To be sure, it is unfair to compare Boston with a population of 12,000, to London, which had 750,000. But it’s true that Boston sometimes had a deeply conservative appearance, meaning that its people did not believe in change.
John Dunton commented that Bostonians liked their beer and ale so much that the taverns were the most important places in town. He did not write very much about Harvard College, but had he spent time in Cambridge, Dunton would have witnessed the rise of a truly fine college, one that combined the best of the new and old styles of learning. Harvard commencement was held on the first Sunday in July in those days, and it usually was a festive event with everyone that was anyone in Boston taking a boat across the Charles for the occasion.
How did Boston fare during the long peace that came after 1713?
Queen Anne’s War ended in a draw with England and France stepping back from what had been a truly fratricidal conflict. Massachusetts, indeed most of New England, benefited from the end of the war, but Boston went into a financial funk from which it took decades to recover. It’s difficult to nail down the precise reason, but the appearance of Manhattan and Philadelphia as trade rivals had something to do with it. Boston skippers still took horses, mules, and lumber to the Caribbean, and returned with sugar, molasses, and slaves, but the profits were smaller than in the past.
Speaking of slavery, how many slaves lived in eighteenth-century Boston?
Far more than we might think. Slavery was never a big business in Boston, but the upper-class families nearly all had at least one slave to cook and clean. Even at this early stage of the game, Bostonians had highly developed sensibilities, and they referred to these African Americans as servants, rather than slaves. There is no doubt as to their real status, however.
Blacks also appear in the public records. “Jeremy the Negro,” as he was labeled in the town reports, may have been the first African American appointed to a position of public trust. For several consecutive years, he was chosen as one of the four official chimney sweeps for the town. Jeremy was a free person, and there may have been a few dozen such in Boston in the 1720s. They were far outnumbered by those that were slaves, however.
How did Bostonians feel about King George I and King George II?
The Hanoverian Dynasty was a German family that came to London in 1714. King George I spoke almost no English, and when his son became King George II in 1727, little improvement was seen. The English, back home, treated the new Hanoverians with a mixture of fondness and contempt, but the Bostonians had little sense of there being any difference. To them, the king or queen was a distant figure at best. One of the few occasions on which this changed was when the king, Parliament, or both attempted to regulate the colonies in terms of taxes and trade.
The Molasses Act of 1733 was one of the first attempts by the motherland to collect revenue from the colonies. Bostonians were strongly affected by this because sugar and molasses formed an important part of their trade. But during the short reign of King George I, and the relatively long reign of George II, Bostonians did their best to avoid and evade taxes rather than show any outright defiance.
What influence did the motherland have on religion in Boston and Massachusetts?
Up to about the year 1730, Bostonians and their country cousins did not care a whit about what the motherland did or did not do in terms of religion. But the Puritan influence, which carried Boston such a long and powerful distance, began to wane in the third decade of the eighteenth century. Many reverend pastors confessed that attendance was slack, and that they sometimes felt as if they were skating on ice, as far as relationships with their parishioners were concerned.
The big change came in the early 1740s. First there was a religious revival in western Massachusetts. Reverend Jonathan Edwards of Northampton, which is located in the Connecticut River valley, witnessed and testified to an extraordinary new spirit among his parishioners. This, often called the first Great Awakening in American religion, reached Boston in due time. But the more dramatic, and powerful, event was the appearance of the Reverend George Whitefield (1714–1770), who made his first visit to Boston in the autumn of 1740.
Why was an outsider such as Reverend George Whitefield given such importance?
He had sensational talent as a preacher. Most Puritan—perhaps Yankee is now the more appropriate term—ministers preached to congregations of two to three hundred people. Reverend Whitefield, by contrast, reveled in preaching out of doors and to truly large crowds. We believe there were ten thousand people at his first outdoor sermon in Boston, and that he may even have attracted a larger crowd in Philadelphia. Without really trying to accomplish it, Whitefield became the first intercolonial uniting force of the eighteenth century. The colonies were by now full of Quakers, Baptists, Scots-Irish, and German settlers. One of the few uniting experiences—enjoyed by people from all social and religious groups—was that of listening to Whitefield preach on the overwhelming mercy of God.
This was a relatively new message for Bostonians, more accustomed to hearing of God’s overwhelming power and his righteousness. Whitefield struck the right chord, however, and when he returned to England after nearly a year of preaching, America was not the same. A leavening had taken place, and the old-line Boston Puritans never again had the power and influence of an earlier time.
How strange that an outsider could have such influence! Did Whitefield return?
He did. Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards, between them, had ignited a transatlantic phenomenon. Whitefield returned to the colonies six times over the next thirty years, and when he made his last voyage, he was buried in Newburyport, forty miles north of Boston.
The Reverend George Whitefield, who happened to be cross-eyed, was a noted minister who was instrumental in spreading the Great Awakening in New England.
Do we have any idea of how long-lasting Whitefield’s influence was?
We feel confident in saying that he influenced a majority of all American colonists between 1740 and 1770, and that hundreds of thousands of colonists met him in person. The extent of his influence can be seen in his relationship with Benjamin Franklin, who by 1740 was one of the leading men of Philadelphia. Franklin was a self-acknowledged skeptic in matters of religion, but he was deeply impressed by Whitefield.
How did Boston fare during the 1740s, which some people called the era of Whitefield?
Economically, Boston faced
