Who were the evangelicals?: conservative and liberal identity in the Unitarian controversy in Boston, 1804-1833 - Massachusetts

[TABULAR DATA FOR TABLE 1 OMITTED]

Table 2

Occupations Represented in the Boston City Directories for 1829-32,
for Male Individuals Associated with Salem Street and Second
Churches

                                Salem Street (%)   Second Church (%)

Total Men                         221                 251

In City Directories               171 (77.38)         195 (77.69)

Occupation Listed                 164 (74.21)         181 (72.11)

Mechanics and                      71 (43.29)          40 (22.10)
Manufacturers

Importers and Merchants            17 (10.37)          34 (18.78)

Banking, Insurance, Finance        13 (7.93)           36 (19.88)
and Commercial Regulation

Shopkeepers                        45 (27.44)          28 (15.47)

Dry Goods                           9 (20.00)           8 (28.57)

Specialties                        18 (40.00)          11 (39.29)

Faneuil Hall Market                 5 (11.11)           4 (14.29)

Grocers                            13 (28.89)           5 (17.86)

Educated Professions/              13 (7.93)            5 (2.76)
Agents

Laborers, Transport Workers        13 (7.93)            5 (2.77)

Miscellaneous                       3 (1.83)            5 (2.76)

No Occupation Listed/               7 (4.09)           14 (7.18)
Substantial Taxable Prop.

The records suggest, therefore, that both the Congregationalists and the Unitarians represented populations with a stronger stake in the standing order than some other populations we might examine - even some other religious populations. Yet they were not exactly the same in socioeconomic character. The membership profiles reinforce the anecdotal evidence we have regarding Unitarianism: that its adherents tended to be better off financially on the whole than the members of other denominations. Second Church contained almost twice as many merchants and importers (by percentage of the church affiliates as a whole) as Salem Street; more than twice as many of its male affiliates were associated in some way with the growing banking, insurance, or financial industries of the city (Table 2). Salem Street, on the other hand, counted twice as many mechanics and small manufacturers (artisans) among its numbers as a percentage of the whole as did Second Church. Moreover, shopkeepers represented more than a quarter of all male Salem Street affiliates who could be identified by occupation, while numbering something more than an eighth of Second Church's adherents. The evidence suggests, therefore, that Congregational evangelicalism indeed constituted "a shopkeepers' millennium," here as in Paul Johnson's Rochester, New York, with mechanics and artisans amply represented.(52)

The data on women reinforce the impression that Salem Street's congregants were somewhat less well off than their Unitarian counterparts. A higher percentage of Second Church's female affiliates were listed in the City Directories, but many fewer of them were associated with occupations. The Second Church women who surfaced in the Directory were by and large widows, with no stated source of financial support (Table 4). It is tempting to see them as perhaps on the average older than their Salem Street counterparts, and well-fixed enough not to need to advertise an occupation in the City Directory. Salem Street conversion narratives, in addition, identify many of the female adherents as younger women, many of whom had recently come to the city.