Brahmins - Knickerbockers
Brahmins: When Theodore Roosevelt was born there were no Boston Brahmins. The term was invented in 1860 by Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. who was a physician and writer. The term was used to describe Boston’s High “Priestly” Society in the way Brahmins identified the Hindu priestly spiritual caste.
In Boston it means, in the tradition of the White Anglo Saxon Protestants. Their heritage in the U.S. began at the start and frequently, like the Roosevelt’s of New York, made their money as merchants. Many went to Harvard. They opposed immigration like Bill Cutting in the movie Gangs of New York and prided themselves on what they saw as their privilege in position and social inheritance.
Holmes also coined the phrase Hub of the Solar System that still remains Boston’s nickname.” Today it’s often shortened to The Hub.
The doctor’s son Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was left for dead at Antietam, but survived and was named to Supreme Court by Theodore Roosevelt on the urging of Henry Cabot Lodge. TR interviewed Holmes in a secret meeting and when it was over claimed he was “entirely satisfied.” A year later he told Lodge “I could have carved a better judge out of a banana.” In 1904 when Holmes dissented in Northern Securities Co. v. United States Roosevelt called it a “bitter disappointment.”
It was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. who first said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
Knickerbockers: It came from Washington Irving's 1809 book, “A History of New York” that was a satire on the Dutch colonial period. The success of the narrative turned Irving into a literary Rock Star.
In the book a Knickerbocker was someone who could trace their lineage to the original Dutch Settlers. Irving used the pen name Diedrich Knickerbocker.
Originally the term was limited to the Manhattan elite, but today it covers all New Yorkers.
The Knicks are formally the Knickerbockers. It was also used to name a magazine, beer and baseball team. At the Polo Grounds from 1955 to 1957 there was a huge Knickerbocker Beer sign in dead center field. Knickerbocker beer was owned by Jacob Rupert who owned the Yankees, turned the team around, bought Babe Ruth’s contract and built Yankee Stadium. He died in 1938 at age 71.
Some mistakenly believe the name came from the New York Knickerbocker Club at 2 East 62nd Street, established in 1871. The club is one of the most elite gentleman’s club.s in the world. However, the club isn't the origin of the Knickerbockers it was instead named in the honor of Irving’s pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker.
Irving was so good at creating history he just couldn’t help himself. In his 1828 book “The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus” he wrote Columbus sailed west to prove the Earth wasn’t flat. Irving actually met with theologians warning you could sail off the edge.
In 1492 it was general knowledge the Earth wasn’t flat. Sailors knew it since the time of the Greeks. However, Irving's flat earth story was great for book sales. The downside was he created an historic myth that survived into the 20th Century.
