Part 1!

So you asked some really interesting questions here and I’m going to broadly break them up into three different categories if that’s okay.

1. How did the classes in New England differentiate themselves from one another?

The New England Upper-class differentiated themselves in three important ways- culture, architecture, and religion. Now culture and architecture actually aren’t too different than what the landed aristocracy in the South used to keep themselves a cut above the worker class, at least not in theory. Like the South, upper class urban New Englanders bore a distinct culture from their working class brethren. Folk music was a major component of the working class lifestyle in New England- influence from large immigrant populations, especially from Ireland, and the constant influx of sailors into port cities shaped a style of ‘working man’s’ religious music, not unlike the heavily African/religious influenced slave songs that were already well established in the American south. Conversely, the aristocracy tended to enjoy whatever music was popular in European upper classes at the time. This is a major part of the difference between the classes in New England. Waltz’s were incredibly popular at the turn of the 19th century, with patriotic anthems becoming a mainstay of aristocratic life after the War of 1812. Theater played a major role in these people’s lives, as well. Music, dance, and the performing arts were ways to fill the time for a comparatively leisurely lifestyle. Music literacy was a mark of education, as playing piano and orchestral string instruments proved an incredibly popular way to entertain guests. Conversely, much of the working class was functionally music illiterate- instead, they learned their instruments by rote, often with the help of the church and religious ceremonies. It is difficult to exactly tell possible language differences between the classes, as obscenities were simply not written down despite probably being a part of everyday working life (this was summed up excellently on a post on this very sub not too long ago!). Despite this, we do have evidence in song lyrics and oral traditions that cursing and other ‘rude’ or ‘crass’ themes were very present in working class culture, while there are few plays or songs from the time that indicate these themes were present in the aristocracy. Songs like ‘Old Maui’ and, possibly, ‘Randy Dandy O’ (the historical origin of the latter is still hotly contested, though you may recognize it from a recent Assassins Creed game) make jokes about sex and drinking, taboo subjects for the upper class. These cultural divisions were fairly par for the course throughout much of the industrialized world at the time and it is difficult to be certain whether or not they continued behind closed doors, so to speak.

Architecture, on the other hand, is quite interesting. Something I should clear up before I continue, though, is that the upper class I’m talking about is confined more to southern New England (Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island). Much of this upper class had made their money in mills; doctors and lawyers, for example, were often members of the high middle class and did not have nearly the wealth and power that industrialists had. I say this because Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont had very different economies. Often, they focused on the primary sector (things like trapping, fishing, and agriculture), as well as allying in trade and acting as a conduit between the United States and the Canadian territories. As such, their aristocracies were, well, different. Continuing. The Waltham-Lowell system was a style of management that you probably learned about if you’ve taken a US history class. In short, mill workers were housed, clothed, fed, etc., by mill facilities. They shopped at stores owned by the mills and lived in houses owned and maintained by the mills, sometimes even worshipped and played in facilities owned by the mill. This meant that the working class was kept in very tight quarters. Mill housing, often in the form of row houses built so close that they literally shared walls, sprawled near mills for miles to keep the workers close to where their livelihood lay. The upper class played upon this in their own housing. Typically their houses would actually be quite close to their workers’, at least in the early 19th century, to allow them an easy walk to their factories to ensure everything was going well. Their houses, like their taste in the arts, often mimicked whatever happened to be in vogue in England at the time, usually consisting of large mansions with wrap around porches, bright colors, asymmetrical windows, etc. Eventually this style would evolve into the Victorian style that has recently become popular once more (as silly as it sounds, a great example of this type of architecture is the house from Sabrina, the Teenage Witch). Furthermore, these houses would be built closest to the churches in the community. I’ll get on to exactly why in just a second. Regardless, this had an interesting and perhaps unintentional psychological effect of the working class. Imagine you are a poor Irish immigrant. Your home consists of a few rooms and houses your entire family, if not more, as was standard at the time. You likely work upwards of 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. As was fairly standard at the time. Your home is probably in ill repair as you are a low priority; if you don’t like the conditions, you can be easily replaced. Yet every morning when you wake up and walk to the factory, you can see the owners’ and managements’ houses in the distance. You walk by them for church (if you are allowed to attend the same church, more on that later). You’re constantly reminded of your place in the system. It is unknown how intentional this effect was- indeed, it became much less common later in the 19th century due to space and safety concerns. Regardless, it was an easy way for the upper class to differentiate themselves from the lower class and is fairly unique as compared to practices elsewhere in the United States. Imagine if field slaves were houses twenty feet away from the plantation owner! (Of course, for the sake of historical accuracy, it wasn’t uncommon for house slaves to be housed in or very near their owners’ home).

Finally, religion. Religion played a crucial role in the founding of New England and for much of its colonial history and early history, Southern New England was devoutly protestant. This may seem odd if you’ve ever looked at an ethnographic map of New England and noticed that it holds one of the highest concentrations of Catholics in the nation, but there’s good reason for this discrepancy. Early in the industrialization movement, mills employed primarily young children. As they moved inland to areas where boys were needed for farmwork and other forms of manual labor, this became simply young girls. Eventually even they were replaced (due primarily to outside pressure and economic necessity) with poor immigrants. Few immigrant populations have left a mark on the area more than the Irish- a walk through Boston on St. Paddy’s day may very well tell you that! But historically the Irish came to New England in droves. This began largely with the Potato Famine in the mid-19th century, although there were trickles of immigration before then. The journey was comparatively short, jobs were plentiful, food supply was stable- this was a God-send to a nation which was having severe troubles with famine, economic depression, and even the beginnings of sectarian violence. One issue, however, was that the Irish were Catholic. The upper class of New England were devoutly proud of their religion and bred an ugly breed of hate against Catholics. Even through the 21st century, the Klu Klux Klan, an anti-catholic (among a laundry list of other things) organization has flourished in the area. Mill owners and the general aristocracy prided themselves in the thought that they were saved, their God was the right god, and the Irish (and later Polish, then French Canadians, etc.) were inept hell-bound sinners. They donated profusely to their churches and made a large show out of how elegant their church was as compared to others. This is a pretty major reason why so many protestant churches in New England are beautiful. Indeed, the church my parents attend, Park Congregational in Norwich Connecticut is a picture perfect example of this. Ornate architecture, hand carved wooden interiors, mansions on the surrounding lots. And, of course, plenty of name plates on the inside giving credit to exactly WHO made all of this happen. So the protestant catholic divide was largely a divide of social classes in early New England. It was not until poverty and recession hit, however, that religious violence became a very real issue.

Paging /u/LifeMadeSimple