Charles Wells is elected mayor of Boston.

Wells (Nat.-R) defeats Theodore Lyman Jr. by a margin of 3,316 to 2,389 and others to be elected on the second ballot. (The election was delayed when none of the candidate received enough votes in the original election on December 12, 1831.) A bricklayer, Wells is elected, according to Joseph Fahey, as “A protest by the middle classes against what they thought was the high-handed and extravagant way in which Quincy and Otis had managed the city’s affairs.” Inaugurated on January 2, 1832, he presides during a time when the Suffolk County Court House is built in Court Square and quarantine regulations are enacted to protects the city from a smallpox outbreak in 1832.