The Patriot Painters, Part 2: Gilbert Stuart, 1755-1828

Gilbert Stuart, Self Portrait In the case of Gilbert Stuart, the second of our painters, we are dealing with a more talented artist, one of the greatest portrait painters of all time, but a much less intellectually-engaged or public-spirited figure than Charles Willson Paine. Like Peale, Stuart grew up in relative poverty. His father, Gilbert …

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The Name Allston: An Appropriate Choice?

Boston’s Allston section is said to be the only community in the United States named for an artist---the great Romantic painter Washington Allston (1779-1843). This is of course is no small distinction. Allston “Self-Portrait, completed in 1805. By the 1820s this European trained painter was regarded as the greatest artist America had yet produced, having …

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Annexation Embraced: Brighton’s 1873 Acceptance of Boston

  On October 7, 1873 the voters of the independent towns of Brookline and Brighton made sharply contrasting decisions on the question of annexation to the City of Boston. While two-thirds of Brookline’s electors rejected merger with the metropolis, fully 81 percent of Brighton’s electors eagerly embraced the opportunity to join the city. Why did …

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Upcoming Post’s: Annexation Spurned: Brookline’s 1873 Rejection of Boston & Annexation Embraced: Brighton’s 1873 Acceptance of Boston

On October 7, 1873 the voters of the independent towns of Brookline and Brighton made sharply contrasting decisions on the question of annexation to the City of Boston. While two-thirds of Brookline’s electors rejected merger with the metropolis, fully 81 percent of Brighton’s electors eagerly embraced the opportunity to join the city. Why did these …

Continue reading Upcoming Post’s: Annexation Spurned: Brookline’s 1873 Rejection of Boston & Annexation Embraced: Brighton’s 1873 Acceptance of Boston

Abolition Scorned: Boston’s Response to Antislavery

  The radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison Modern Bostonians take pride in the Hub’s association with the anti-slavery crusade. It was here, we are fond of reminding outsiders, that the militantly antislavery newspaper the Liberator was founded in 1831 by radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and that the most resolutely abolitionist organization in the United …

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John Eliot and Nonantum

Reverend John Eliot, the so-called “Apostle to the Indians” In the 1646 to 1674 period, the Reverend John Eliot of Roxbury, the so-called Apostle to the Indians, converted some 1100 Massachusetts natives to the Christian religion and played a central role in establishing fourteen “Praying Indian” communities in the eastern part of Massachusetts. Though not …

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