Chapter 4: Old Money

Why Mary Martha Does What She Does

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Release Date: July 16, 2024

When Mary Martha visited Aimee at University Hospital sometime later, Miss Bell was waiting. She asked the society matron to come into her office — and perhaps hoping to gain favor with the wealthy wife of a trustee — told Martha what Aimee had said.

Knowing a little more about who and what Mary Martha was helps explain what she did next.

The youngest child of Richard Tucker Parker and Martha Sylvester Thorndike, Mary Martha had gained membership by birth into an elite class of Massachusetts families whom the poet Oliver Wendell Holmes labeled the Boston Brahmins.

The self-identified social caste was the exclusive domain of wealthy, well-connected, and genteel merchants and financiers and their descendants who had made their fortunes before the Civil War — in other words, people like the Parkers.

Mary Martha's paternal great grandfather, Israel Thorndike, was active in the lucrative China trade during colonial times and a founding member of the Boston Associates and the Boston Manufacturing Company, the first fully integrated and centralized textile mill in America. At his death in 1832, Israel was considered the fifth wealthiest man in America.

Her grandfather on her maternal side, Charles Thorndike, Israel’s son, was also a successful overseas merchant who, among other notable accomplishments, introduced Russian flax and Italian wheat straw to New England farmers.

Mary Martha’s paternal side was equally impressive, and included Richard Dalton Tucker JR, who was a partner in the one of the first American merchant companies in the Philippines, trading heavily in sugar, Manila hemp and rice in the mid-1800s.

Mary Martha's father, Richard, was a merchant, financier, lobbyist, and real estate tycoon — an article in the Boston Post from 1881 notes he represented $900,000 worth of prime Boston real estate — an investment worth a little over 23 million dollars today. ¹

Mary Martha’s pedigree was also filled with politicians, generals, judges and patriots, many of whom guaranteed her welcome into the many popular social lineage societies of the day, including The National Society of Colonial Dames in America and Daughters of the American Revolution.

Like most Brahmins, Mary Martha’s family was also big into philanthropy and charitable giving. Her father, Richard, donated several paintings from his personal collection to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, underwrote public concerts featuring the works of Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart, and funded multiple programs and hospitals for Boston's orphans, foundlings, and homeless children.

But the thing that really set the Brahmins apart  — and the Parker family as bonafide members of that upper crust of society – was their commitment to and protection of family lineage and all it entailed.

Boston Brahmins definitely knew who they were and where they came from.

In her membership application for the Society of the Colonial Dames of America, Mary Martha listed no fewer than 18 family members who "came to reside in an American Colony before 1776, and whose services were rendered during the Colonial Period." Interestingly enough, however, not a single one bore the Parker surname.

The knowledge of who they were and where they came from was leveraged by the Parkers and people like them to gain entrance into Harvard and Yale, to exclusive clubs like the Somerset and Myopia Hunt Clubs, and to form mutually beneficial social connections, business partnerships, and marriages.

Beyond that, family lineage and belonging were seen as the bedrock of the moral high ground upon which the Boston Brahmins stood. It defined the values and behaviors they hoped to pass on to the next generations — things like discretion, duty, continuity, and entitlement.

And it served as both judge and jury when those values and behaviors weren't upheld.

Scandal could be the ruin of not just an individual Brahmin but of the entire extended family.

Business and financial relationships could be damaged, reputations could be lost, and social contact could be withheld or even permanently severed, in much the same way as wayward Puritans had been banished and excommunicated from Boston a century or more earlier.

This knowledge was bone-deep in Mary Martha. She'd seen it happen in her own family.

At the start of 1833, Mary Martha's maternal grandmother, Mary Martha Purnell Thorndike, was a 27-year-old mother of four small children with another on the way. Life was good, but within two months, everything would change. First her infant son passed away, and then her husband. Six months after that, the Dowager Thorndike would give birth to Mary Martha's mother, Martha Sylvester Thorndike.

By then, Mary Martha’s parents were both dead, as were her husband's parents. Her siblings were in Maryland, and his were in Beverley, MA. Despite a generous estate as well as generational wealth of her own, I can only guess how difficult Mary Martha's life as a young widow and mother must have been.

Then, in 1841 — seven years after her husband's death, 36-year-old Mary Martha Purnell Thorndike did the unthinkable for a widowed Boston Brahmin. She remarried outside the fold.

Her new husband, Ezra Bourne, was a wealthy man in his own right and came from one of the best families in Barnstable, MA. By the time he and Mary Martha were married, Ezra listed his occupation as a "gentleman" and had the title Esquire behind his name.

Still, the marriage was viewed by some — including seven-year-old Martha Sylvester Thorndike — as scandalous. That Martha had continued to push back about her mother's choices became apparent in 1881 when Mary Martha Purnell Thorndike Bourne died.

Here's the story from the Boston Globe:

The Bourne will contest is ended, but in an unlooked-for way. Mr. Allen Thorndike Rice will receive $500,000 besides one-third of the residue of the estate. The facts in the case are these: Mrs. M. A. Thorndike, widow, married Mr. Bourne of Boston. She had four daughters, one of whom was Mr. Rice's mother. Mrs. Rice died before her mother's second marriage. The other three daughters bitterly opposed the marriage. Young Rice, however, entertained a filial regard for Mr. Bourne, who expressed a desire to further the young man's interests. Mr. Bourne left his property to his wife, who carried out her husband's wishes. The other three daughters opposed the will, with the result above named. ²

Which gets to another reason — perhaps the most crucial reason — Mary Martha Parker and other Boston Brahmins like her were so dedicated to managing and protecting the integrity of kinship lines — they determined how generational wealth was transferred and to whom.

By the time she was just 17, so much generational wealth had been transferred to Mary Martha that Ebenezer Bacon — President of the Boston Exchange and the Washington National Bank — had been appointed her personal financial guardian.

When her mother had died in 1858, Mary Martha had gotten a portion of an estate her mother had inherited from her own father, Charles Thorndike, upon his death in 1833. And Charles had inherited much of his wealth from his father, Israel.

Likewise, when her paternal grandfather, James Parker the Elder, had died, Mary Martha had inherited money transferred to him when his father, John Parker, died in 1840. And when Mary Martha's own father, Richard, died in 1904, she inherited wealth that had been passed down for three generations from members of the Parker, Tucker, Chandler and Phillips families.

But, the transfer of generational wealth wasn't restricted to parents and grandparents. Mary Martha inherited from her brothers, James and Charles, when they died, from her cousin, Allen Thorndike Rice, from an aunt, Anna Parker Lowell, as well as from other members of her extended bloodline.

So, in the summer of 1912, when Miss Bell disclosed to Mary Martha that Aimee had dared to suggest the two of them were blood relatives — that they were, in fact, mother and daughter — there's little doubt that Mary Martha saw it as a personal, social and financial threat.

And she quickly responded accordingly.

Copyright 2024 Lori Olson White

As a family historian, I love learning more about family lines and heritage, but in researching the story of Aimee and Mary Martha, I came to realize that for some folks, the ancestral coat of arms is attached to a very powerful weapon! I’d love to hear your thoughts on the many ways family ties have been — and continue to be — used in your family, and families you may have researched.

"In all of us there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage - to know who we are and where we came from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness." — Alex Haley, Roots

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Chapter Endnotes

¹ “At the Statehouse: The Elevated Railroad Problem - Views of the Remonstrants, The Life Insurance Tax-Other Committee Hearings, Names, Dates, Etc.”,  Boston (MA) Post, February 26, 1881. p. 3.

² “End of the Bourne Will Contest”, Boston (MA) Globe, March 6, 1882. P. 1.