Joseph Lovering Out Late

Francis S. Drake’s Tea Leaves (1884) is our source for Joseph M. Lovering’s tale of the Boston Tea Party—as passed on by admiring neighbors.

Lovering was born in 1758, so he was still in his early teens in 1773. He lived near the corner of what became Hollis and Tremont Streets. Among his neighbors was the house carpenter John Crane, whose house is shown here.

Joseph’s father, also named Joseph Lovering, appears on that list of the first men to volunteer to patrol the docks and ensure no tea was landed.

Tea Leaves says:

Respecting Mr. Lovering’s connection with the Tea Party, Mr. George W. Allan, of West Canton Street, Boston, now eighty-two years of age, relates that about the year 1835, he frequently conversed with that gentlemen, who told him that on the evening of December 16, 1773, when he was fifteen years of age, he held the light in Crane’s carpenter’s shop, while he and others, fifteen in number, disguised themselves preparatory to throwing the tea into Boston harbor. He also said that some two hundred persons joined them on their way to the wharf, where the tea-ships lay.

Mr. George H. Allan, the son of George W. Allan, received a similar statement from Mr. Lovering, a short time before the latter’s death, which occurred June 13, 1848, at the age of eighty-nine years and nine months.

Mr. Lovering appears to have been the youngest person connected with this affair, of whom we have any knowledge. His boyish curiosity led him to accompany the party to the scene of operations at Griffin’s wharf, and on the following morning he was closely questioned and severely reprimanded by his parents, for being out after nine o’clock at night, as they were strict in their requirement that he should be in bed at that hour.

Other authors echo Drake in designating Lovering as the youngest participant in the Boston Tea Party. Of course, he didn’t claim to have destroyed any tea, only to have held that lantern and then watched the operation.

As an adult, Lovering followed his father into the spermaceti candle and perfume business, becoming quite successful. He was a Boston selectman and alderman and then a representative to the Massachusetts General Court. He was an active member of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, serving alongside Benjamin Russell, and of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. In sum, he had the social status in nineteenth-century Boston to be believed.

One of Drake’s informants for Lovering’s story, George H. Allan, also told him about Crane, his great-grandfather, and supplied a silhouette of tea ship owner Francis Rotch.