American Tempest (39 page)

William Russell, 25. Schoolteacher. Served as sergeant-major in war, before signing on as a captain's clerk on a privateer. Captured and jailed on board notorious prison ship
Jersey
.

Joseph Shed, 41. Carpenter, grocer.

Benjamin Simpson. Bricklayer. Served in Continental Army.

Peter Slater, 24. Ropemaker. Served five years in Continental Army.

Samuel Sloper.

Thomas Spear.

Samuel Sprague, 20. Mason.

John Spurr, 25. Fought in Revolutionary War; captured and held captive in Halifax for fourteen months.

James Starr, 32.

Ebenezer Stevens, 22. Carpenter. Successively a first lieutenant, captain, and lieutenant colonel in artillery; fought at Saratoga and later in Lafayette's Virginia campaign. Leading New York merchant after war.

Abraham Tower.

Thomas Urann. Ship joiner, and surveyor of boards (forest lumber), Freemason.

Josiah Wheeler, 30. House builder.

Joshua Wyeth, 15. Served in Revolutionary army.

Dr. Thomas Young, physician, early follower of Samuel Adams. Became Samuel Adams's personal physician; was army surgeon in Revolutionary War.

The families and descendants claim that the following men participated in the Boston Tea Party:

Nathaniel Barber, 45. Merchant, insurance sales, Freemason.

Samuel Bernard, 26. Major in the Revolutionary War.

Henry Bass, 34. Merchant.

Edward Bates.

David Bradlee, 31. One of four Bradlee brothers; no other facts available on any of them.

Josiah Bradlee, 19.

Nathaniel Bradlee, 27.

Thomas Bradlee, 29.

Seth Ingersoll Brown, 23. House carpenter; wounded at Bunker Hill; fought during the rest of the war.

Stephen Bruce. Merchant, Freemason.

Benjamin Burton, 24. Officer in Revolutionary War; magistrate and state legislator post-war.

George Carleton.

John Cochran, 23.

Gilbert Colesworthy, 29.

Gershom Collier.

James Foster Condy. Bookseller.

Samuel Cooper, 18. Second lieutenant in artillery; later, quartermaster.

Thomas Dana, Jr.

Robert Davis, 26. Merchant, importer of groceries, wines, liquors; Freemason; artillery officer in war.

Joseph Eaton. Hatter, fought in artillery during the war.

————Eckley. Barber. Jailed after informer reported him to British.

William Etheridge. Mason.

Samuel Fenno. Housewright.

Samuel Foster. Minuteman at Lexington; captain during Revolutionary War.

John Fulton.

Samuel Hammond, 24. Farmer.

John Hicks, 18. Killed near Lexington.

Samuel Hobbs, 23. Farmer, tanner, leather worker.

Thomas Hunstsble, 20.

Abraham Hunt, 25. Wine-shop keeper, Freemason. Lieutenant, then captain during war.

David Kinnison, 27. Farmer; fought in Revolutionary War, War of 1812.

Amos Lincoln. 20. Housewright; Freemason; fought at Bunker Hill; served as artillery captain during war; supervised woodwork of Massachusetts State House; married a daughter of Paul Revere.

Thomas Machin, 29. Engineer, canal design and construction; surveyor. Wounded at Bunker Hill; served as lieutenant in artillery during war; laid out fortifications for defense of Boston and Boston Harbor.

Archibald MacNeil, 23.

John May, 25. Colonel in the Revolutionary War, Boston selectman and fire warden.

——Mead.

Anthony Morse. Lieutenant in Revolutionary War.

Joseph Mountford, 23. Cooper.

Eliphalet Newell. Freemason.

Joseph Pearse Palmer. Merchant of hardware, West Indian goods. Brigade major, then quartermaster-general in Revolutionary War.

Jonathan Parker. Helped capture cannon from gunhouse.

John Peters, 41. Born in Portugal; fought at Lexington, Bunker Hill, Saratoga, Yorktown. Moved to Philadelphia after war.

Samuel Pitts, 28. Merchant, Corps of Cadets.

Henry Prentiss, 24. Captain in artillery, then sea captain, then Boston merchant. John Randall, 23.

Joseph Roby.

Robert Sessions, 21. Town official, South Wilbraham.

Phineas Stearns, 37. Farmer, blacksmith. Fought in French and Indian War and Revolutionary War.

Elisha Story, 30. Surgeon. Fought at Bunker Hill; served as doctor at Long Island, White Plains, and Trenton. Helped capture Boston cannons.

James Swan, 19. Merchant, politician, soldier, author.

John Truman.

Isaac Williams.

David Williams.

Jeremiah Williams, blacksmith.

Thomas Williams, 19. Minuteman at Lexington.

Nathaniel Willis, 18. Printer, publisher of
Independent Chronicle
.

Abbreviations:

Boston Public Library: BPL

Massachusetts Historical Society: MHS

Notes to Introduction

1
. Herbert S. Allan,
John Hancock, Patriot in Purple
(New York: Beechurst Press, 1953), 136.

2
. Douglass Adair and John A. Schutz, eds.,
Peter Oliver's Origin & Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961; original ms. written in 1781), 3.

3
. Rodris Roth, “Tea Drinking in 18th-Century America: Its Etiquette and Equipage,” in
United States National Museum Bulletin
, 61–91 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1961), 64.

4
. Adair and Schutz, 28n.

5
. Ibid., 143–44.

6
. Ibid., 105.

7
. Ibid.

8
. Ibid., 162–63.

9
. Lyman H. Butterfield, ed.,
Diary and Autobiography of John Adams
, 4 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), II:85–86.

Notes to Chapter 1

1
. Adair and Schutz, 102.

2
. Attributed to Adams by Francis Rotch, part owner of the
Dartmouth
, in Bernhard Knollenberg,
Growth of the American Revolution: 1766–1775
(New York: Free Press, 1975), 100.

3
. Benjamin Woods Labaree,
The Boston Tea Party
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 141.

4
. Francis S. Drake,
Tea Leaves: Being a Collection of Documents Relating to the Shipment of Tea to the American Colonies in 1773 by the East India Company
(Boston: A. O. Crane, 1884), LXXI–LXXII.

5
. Drake, LXVIII.

6
. Adair and Schutz, 102–03.

7
. Samuel Adams,
The Writings of Samuel Adams
:
1764–1802, Collected and Edited by Harry Alonzo Cushing
, 4 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1908), I:5. [hereafter Adams,
Writings
]

8
. Adair and Schutz, 28 (emphasis original).

9
. Ibid.

10
. John Adams to William Tudor, December 18, 1816; March 29, 1817; Charles Francis Adams, ed.,
The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States
, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1856), X:232–34; 244–49. [hereafter Adams,
Works
]

11
. Lawrence Henry Gipson,
The Coming of the Revolution, 1763–1775
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954), 38, citing William Tudor,
The Life of James Otis of Massachusetts
(Boston, 1823), 68–69.

12
. A. B. Benson, ed.,
Peter Kalm's Travels in North America
, 2 vols. (New York: Dover Publications, 1966), I:131, as cited in Gipson, 20.

13
.
Boston News-Letter
, July 16, 1764, Boston Public Library [hereafter BPL].

14
. Ibid.

15
. W. T. Baxter,
The House of Hancock: Business in Boston, 1724–1775
(New York: Russell & Russell, 1965), 22.

16
. Adair and Schutz, 39.

Notes to Chapter 2

1
. Allan, 155.

2
.
Boston Evening Post
, July 8, 1765, BPL.

3
. Adair and Schutz, 162–63.

4
. Samuel Eliot Morison,
Three Centuries of Harvard: 1636–1936
(Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1936), 144.

5
. Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, eds.,
The Diaries of George Washington
, 6 vols. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976–79), I:195.

6
. Adair and Schutz, 162.

Notes to Chapter 3

1
. GW to Dinwiddie, June 3. 1754, in W. W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig, eds.,
The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series: 1748–August 1755
, 10 vols. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983–1995), I:122–25.

2
. Douglas Southall Freeman,
George Washington
, completed by John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth, 7 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1957), II:21.

3
. Ibid., II:64.

4
. Gipson, 30.

5
. Ibid., 34.

6
. Arthur M. Schlesinger,
The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution
(New York: Atheneum, 1968), 40–41.

7
. G. S. Kimball, ed.,
Correspondence of William Pitt
, 2 vols. (New York, 1906), II:320–21.

8
. Adair and Schutz, 46.

9
. Affidavit of Salem Custom House clerk Samuel Toovey, September 17, 1764, in Hiller B. Zobel,
The Boston Massacre
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1970), 20.

10
. Thomas Hutchinson,
The History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 1749– 74
, 3 vols. (London: John Murray, 1828), 3:117–18.

11
. James Truslow Adams,
Revolutionary New England, 1691–1776
(Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1923), 269.

12
. Hutchinson to Richard Jackson, May 5, 1765, in Zobel, 22.

13
.
Boston Gazette
, January 31, 1763, BPL.

14
. Peter Orlando Hutchinson,
The Diary and Letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, Esq., Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of His Late Majesty's Province of Massachusetts Bay in North America
, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., 1884), I:6.

15
. Gipson, 38.

16
. Schlesinger, 54n.

17
. Adams, I:32.

Notes to Chapter 4

1
. Reverend Francis Thackeray,
A History of the Right Honorable William Pitt, Earl of Chatham
(London, 1827), 31.

2
. Adams,
Revolutionary New England
, 293.

3
.
Pennsylvania Journal
, August 17, 1774;
Boston Evening Post
, November 21, 1763, BPL.

4
. Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
The Basic Political Writings: On the Social Contract
, trans. and ed. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987), 141.

5
. Ibid., 144–53.

6
. Adair and Schutz, 4–5.

7
. Bernhard Knollenberg,
Origin of the American Revolution: 1759–1766
(New York: Free Press, 1960), 142.

8
. Production of local currencies had created shortages of British currency in both England and America, as colonists hoarded all the British pounds they could obtain and insisted on paying for goods and services with colonial rather than British pounds. The drain illustrated the economic principle that Sir Thomas Gresham would enunciate in 1858: that bad money drives out good money, that is, when two coins of equal face value have different intrinsic value—such as a copper penny vs. a gold penny—the coin with the lower intrinsic value will remain in circulation whereas the public hoards the more valuable coin, and it disappears from the market.

9
.
Boston Gazette
, January 16, 1764, BPL.

10
. James Otis,
The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved
(1763), quoted in Adams,
Writings
, X:293–94.

11
. Ibid., 294.

12
. To this day, members of Parliament do not necessarily live in the boroughs they represent, and in the eighteenth century many came from so-called rotten boroughs inhabited by fewer than fifty people, and pocket boroughs inhabited by a single noble family. As William Pitt charged in his demand for electoral reforms, “The House of Commons is not the representative of the people of Great Britain, but of nominal boroughs, ruined towns, noble families, wealthy individuals, and foreign potentates.”