Talking about Tea

Last weekend I wrote about samples of tea supposedly from the Boston Tea Party preserved in New England museums.

On Tuesday I joined Prof. Robert Allison and Jonathan Lane of the Revolution 250 podcast to talk about those relics, as well as other pieces of Tea Party history and lore.

Was John Hancock really on the docks that night? Who was the man caught trying to sneak away some of the tea (later fictionalized as Dove in Johnny Tremain)? Who came up with the name “Boston Tea Party”? We talked about those questions and many more. Find that podcast episode here.

We also talked (on microphone and off) about some Tea Party relics that hadn’t made my postings, mostly because I hadn’t heard of them yet. Here’s another local purported sample of tea.

The Hingham Historical Society’s Old Ordinary museum is the present repository of loose leaves and a legend, as this blog post explains:

An antique tea caddy, donated to the Society by Mary Henrietta Gibson Hersey, the widow of Alfred Henry Hersey, shortly before her death in 1941, came with a small quantity of loose tea and a note capturing the history of the tea — as provided to the family by an Elizabeth Hersey (unclear which, of a number of Elizabeth’s in the family, this would have been):

“Tea from one of the vessels whose cargo was thrown overboard in Boston harbor by the Patriots at the beginning of the Revolution, December 16, 1773.”

No claim about who collected that tea, so nothing to check.

Finally, here’s another reminder that Revolutionary Spaces’ Old South Meeting-House is hosting a recreation of the “Meeting of the People” mass protests in November and December 1773, which led up to the destruction of the tea. That will start Friday, 16 December, at 6:30 P.M. You can purchase tickets here.