Author: Tamara Plakins Thornton

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1989-01-01

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0300042566

Between the Revolution and the Civil War, many merchants, financiers, manufacturers, lawyers, and politicians of Boston’s elite settles on country estates, took up gentleman farming, and founded agricultural and horticultural societies. It is a curious fact of history that these men, who were directly responsible for changing the Massachusetts economy from a farming to a commercial and industrial one, spent so much time identifying themselves with things rural and agrarian. In this lively and well-illustrated book, Tamara Plakins Thornton documents the rural pursuits and argues that elite Bostonians drew on their rich reservoir of associations to characterize themselves as virtuous members of a legitimate American elite.