Today marks the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, an iconic moment in American history. Not surprisingly, Marietta has connections to it. American colonists’ incessant complaints of “taxation without representation” against their British rulers came to a boiling point on Dec 16, 1773. Three years earlier, British parliament had repealed most of the despised Townshend Act taxes, but those imposed on their favorite beverage, tea, remained. Seeing no additional resolution, Americans resorted to a boycott that caused the East India Company warehouses in London to overflow with unused inventory.

The Tea Party events began on Nov 28, 1773 when the ship Dartmouth, loaded with tea, arrived at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston. Members of the Sons of Liberty patriotic group assembled at the docks and prevented it from being unloaded. Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Governor refused to let the Dartmouth leave port without first paying THEIR taxes for its cargo…which again was not being allowed to offload. To make a complicated and volatile situation even more explosive, two more ships carrying chests of tea, Eleanor and Beaver, arrived on Dec 2nd and 15th, respectively. The Dartmouth and Eleanor both held 114 tea chests and the Beaver carried 112, each chest weighing about 350 pounds.

A series of community meetings were held at the Congregational Church’s Old South Meeting House. Among the church members there were Samuel Adams, Ben Franklin, and William Dawes. At the final meeting on the sixteenth, the Dartmouth’s payment was due, but it was not paid.

An estimated 5,000 people gathered there and the crowd was whipped into a frenzy by fiery speeches and protestations by many of Boston’s most influential leaders.

The exact number of participants who dumped tea into the harbor is unknown, but 116 participants have been documented. In all, approximately 46 tons of tea were dumped overboard, resulting in a loss of about £10,000, or about $1.7 million today. The only other property damage done was a single broken padlock on one of the ships, but it was quickly replaced the next day.

As a result, British Parliament passed the Boston Port Act in March 1774. It closed that city to all commerce and ordered its citizens to pay large fines for the lost tea. This new act, along with others the British called the “Coercive Acts,” (better known in America today as the “Intolerable Acts”) led to the organization and meeting of the First Continental Congress. During the city’s occupation in the American Revolution, British officers used as their stables the Old South Meeting House where the Tea Party had been organized. This was in further retaliation for the insurrection. Pews were removed, the floor was covered with dirt, and horses were housed within the historic structure to allow the officers to practice riding indoors on foul weather days.

That church’s interior was all but destroyed by the time the British evacuated Boston forever in March 1776.

Marietta has at least three known connections to this monumental event in our nation’s founding. One of Marietta’s earliest pioneers, Colonel John May of Boston, was an active participant.

Dr. Elisha Story, brother of Marietta’s first commissioned minister Rev. Daniel Story, was one of its most famous tea dumpers. And finally, William Dawes, ancestor of the Dawes family in Marietta, who was best known for another famous Revolutionary War event, was the third. Details of these three men will follow in future articles