Ending the Year by Burning Tea

In my write-up of the Charlestown tea burning, I mixed up the date of the town meeting when everyone agreed to stop selling tea (28 Dec 1773) with the date the townspeople burned their stocks of tea (31 December, or 250 years ago today).

That in turn led to misdating when a crowd from Boston confiscated Ebenezer Withington’s tea in Dorchester.

I’ve corrected those postings.

To my chagrin, I found that I’d actually flagged a source to discuss on this date, but while traveling during this holiday season I overlooked that draft.

So here is a timely account of the events of 31 Dec 1773 from our old friend, merchant John Rowe:

The People of Charlestown collected what Tea they could find in The Town & burnt it in the View of a thousand Spectators.

There was found in the House of One Withington of Dorchester About half a Chest of Tea

the People gathered together & took the Tea Brought it into the Common of Boston & Burnt it this Night about Eleven of Clock—

This is Supposed to be part of the Tea that was taken out of the Ships and floated over to Dorchester—

Rowe’s recounting (probably second-hand) adds a couple of details to the newspaper report: the large crowd in Charlestown and a more precise timing of the tea-burning on Boston Common.

Overall, these incidents show that, despite fears of how the London government would react to the destruction of East India Company property, Bostonians were closing out the year by getting more strict about enforcing their tea boycott on everyone.