Jerome V.C. Smith is elected mayor of Boston.

Smith (Know-Nothing Party), with 6,840 votes, defeats John Wilkins, with 3,171, and others to be elected to the first of two consecutive terms as mayor. He lives at the Tremont House. Described by Richard Henry Dana Jr. as being “raised by accident to a mayoralty,” Joseph Farley subsequently writes that “[Smith] made many suggestions for the improvement of the city’s government, though, fortunately for the city’s credit, few of them were carried out.” One of those suggestions was a proposal to sell Quincy Market.