Boston Tea Party 252nd Anniversary Commemoration

An artisan shoemaker, George Robert Twelves Hewes was a typical working-class Bostonian, a group without whom the buildup to the Revolution could never have succeeded. He was part of the Boston Massacre mob and attended protests at Old South the next day. He also came to the Tea Party meetings and helped dump tea into the harbor afterwards. He lived to be 98 years old. 

Hailing from a lineage of commerce and public service, Samuel Savage was the moderator of the meetings at Old South that led to the Boston Tea Party. A successful merchant and prominent public figure, he had a close friendship with Samuel Adams. During the war, Savage served in Massachusetts' shadow government as president of the burgeoning state's Board of War. He remained in Weston and in public service until his death in 1797. 

The son of the owner of the Dartmouth, one of the three tea-carrying ships in Boston harbor, Francis Rotch tried to walk a fine line between angering the whigs and protecting his financial interests. At the behest of the meeting at Old South, the 23 year old rode to ask Governor Hutchinson's permission to allow the tea ships to leave harbor but was refused. Upon his return to Old South and delivery of this news, the whigs went to the harbor to toss the tea.

A fiery leader of the Sons of Liberty, Samuel Adams was part of the radical wing of the whigs. A sometime member of the legislature of Massachusetts, Adams constantly poked at royal authority and stoked the flames of resentment amongst Bostonians. On December 16, 1773, his cry of "This meeting can do nothing more to save this country!" signalled the Sons of Liberty to go to Griffin's Wharf to toss the tea. He eventually became the second state governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Paul Revere was a Renaissance Man: printer, silversmith, engraver, soldier, dentist, spy. An ardent patriot, Revere was a supporting character in much of the dissentious activity against the British government in the 1760s and '70s. He is best known for his "Midnight Ride" on April 18, 1775, to warn colonists in Lexington and Concord of the movement of British troops to those towns; the next day would feature the first battles of the war.

As one of the seven merchants chosen by the British East India Company to sell tea, Isaac Winslow Clarke's family and home came under attack from the whigs of Boston who threw bricks through windows and barged through doors. His sister Susanna married the prolific artist John Singleton Copley. One of many Loyalist refugees from America during the Revolution, he lived with the Copleys in London before becoming Deputy Commissary-General in Montreal, Canada, in 1812. 

John Hancock was one of the wealthiest men in Boston before the Revolution, making him deeply concerned with the numerous taxes coming across the Atlantic. His first political office was in the Boston Assembly in 1765; by his death in 1793, he had been president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and Continental Congress and the first state governor of Massachusetts.

Born in Connecticut in 1749, John Scollay moved to Boston as a young man. Filled with great courage and patriotic passion, he participated in the Boston Tea Party and later served as a Colonel in the Continental Army before becoming a fire warden and selectman in town. May later explored modern Ohio, taking two trips there in 1788 and 1789. 

William Molineux's reputation as a firebrand survived his passing in late 1774. A super-radical Son of Liberty and organizer of Boston mobs against Parliament's taxes, Molineux advocted for nonimportation agreements and boycotts of British goods, pushing his fellow whigs further and further into hostile action against the government. Now buried in Granary Burial Ground in Boston, he is often overlooked as a revolutionary leader.

Wilfree Fischer was a tory attendee of the Tea Party meetings at Old South. He held particular grievance with William Molineux and the violence the whigs perpetrated against both property and person of the tories. 

Joseph Warren is one of the early tragic losses on the Patriot side of the Revolution. A member of a long-tenured family line, Warren, a doctor, was only in his 30s as Bostonians began to agitate against the Crown; his newspaper articles under the pseudonym "A True Patriot" helped stoke the flames. He quickly rose to prominence in the Patriot ranks. Involved in the Boston Committee of Safety and later the raising of militias, Warren became a General in the Continental Army, falling on June 17, 1775, at the Battle of Bunker Hill. 

Phillis Wheatley Peters is the first published African American poet. Transported from Africa in her youth to be enslaved in America, Wheatley Peters' owners taught her to read and write, eventually putting her poetic talent to great use. Upon the publication of her poetry, many called for her freedom, which she received in 1774. A congregant of Old South during enslavement, Phillis leaves church records following her manumission, a sign that her attendance was not voluntary and rather due to her owner worshipping there.

Susanna Copley was born into the Clarke and Winslow families, both of which had high social standing. Her surname comes from her marriage to the renowned and prolific American painter John Singleton Copley. The Clarke family, agents of the East India Company, came under attack from whigs protesting the tea tax, prompting the Copleys to side with the tories. Susanna and her children followed John to London to flee the growing violence in Boston—they lived in the English capital until their deaths. Susanna lived longer, passing in 1836.

Lucy Flucker's marriage to Henry Knox. one of the most important officers in the Continental Army, was a social faux pas: she married below her class and was disowned by her family in the process. She also deviated from her family politically: her father Thomas was the Royal Secretary of Massachusetts. A well-educated and assertive woman, Flucker established herself as Knox's equal in the home, and many of her letters to her battlefield-bound husband survive, telling of the couple's mutual love and respect and the difficulties of family in wartime. 

While there is much scholarly confusion over Prince Hall's early years, there is no question regarding his lasting influence. Born somewhere between 1738 and 1748 and enslaved to William Hall of Boston, Hall was a leatherworker. He was manumitted in 1770, owned real estate, and could vote in his hometown of Medford. When the Revolution broke out, Hall fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill where Dr. Joseph Warren was killed. He later became a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Cambridge and would go on to found the first African American Freemason Lodge, the oldest recognized and continuously active Black organization in America. 

A figure perhaps paradoxical to modern viewers, Josiah Quincy, Jr., was a staunch Patriot in the lead-up to the Revolution. A talented young lawyer, alongside John Adams, Quincy defended the soldiers of the Boston Massacre at trial, an act predictable of a Loyalist. However, he sided with his father's political leanings, supporting whig activity until his death in 1775. His family experienced a schism typical of many during the Revolutionary and Civil Wars: Josiah's brother, Samuel, was a Loyalist. Similar to the Flucker-Knoxes, the Quincys are exemplative of the political lines drawn within both society and families that could shatter interpersonal relationships.

Dr. Thomas Young was a paradoxical Patriot as the Revolution approached. At times a proponent of violence, at others a pacifier, Young was prolific in his attendance in the Boston Town Meeting. Following his tenure as a physician in New York, his early years in Boston featured his advocation for violence against those who would suppress freedom. He also called on street mobs following the Boston Massacre to refrain from violence, and defended Francis Rotch at the meetings at Old South preceeding the Tea Party. A close associate of Samuel Adams, Young served on the Boston Committee of Correspondence, one of many in the colonies that worked to organize colonial resistance to England.

Archibald Wilson was a conservative attendee of the Tea Party meetings. His notably criticized Samuel Adams, claiming that Adams' motivation for opposing the tea was to supplement Bostonian diets with Adams' imported rum. A merchant himself, Wilson cared deeply about the ability of individuals to maintain their own business how they wanted.

Town criers were in use throughout the colonial period to announce news to townspeople. Dating centuries back in the English world, they typically worked for the King, eventually coming into use for the military and, later, private uses. Some places, such as Alexandria, Virginia, and Sylvania, Ohio, still employ town criers as ceremonial officiants, parade leaders, and ambassadors to other towns and countries.