The Boston Trustee: The Laws, Lives, and Legacy of a Vital Institution

The history of a unique Boston institution: the men and women who serve as individual professional trustees, who control billions of dollars of assets, who have provided advice and counsel for generations of families, and who are universally known as “Boston Trustees.”

This quiet and discrete legal service had its roots in the early nineteenth century, when Boston’s closely interconnected social and cultural élite faced the problem of how to pass on massive new wealth in a predictable, safe,...