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Benjamin Edes, Father of the Boston Tea Party and Keeper of Its Secrets

Benjamin Edes instigated and paid for the Boston Tea Party – and, to his death, guarded the secret list of all who participated.

Edes along with John Gill published the Boston Gazette and Country Journal, a leading voice for American independence. The Royal Lt. Gov. Andrew Oliver called it ‘that infamous paper.’

“The temper of the people may be surely learned’ from it,” Oliver said.

Benjamin Edes‘ son Peter was convinced his father would have been hanged or sent to England to be tried if he had fallen into British hands. Peter himself served 3-1/2 months in prison for cheering the patriot side during the Battle of Bunker Hill.

“If my father had been like some other men, he might have been worth thousands on thousands of dollars; but he preferred the liberties of his country to all,“ wrote Peter Edes.

Benjamin Edes

Benjamin Edes was born Oct. 14, 1732 in Charlestown, Mass., one of seven children of Peter Edes and Esther Hall. He married Martha Starr sometime around 1754. The next year he and Gill took over the Boston Gazette.

Edes helped form the Sons of Liberty and, through the Gazette, agitated against the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts and the tea tax. The newspaper broke news about tax disputes, the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party, and it also served as a mouthpiece for Samuel Adams.

On Dec. 16, 1773, Benjamin Edes hosted a group of men in his parlor before they set out for the Dartmouth, the Eleanor and the Beaver.

The Boston Tea Party, instigated by Benjamin Edes

His son Peter, who would turn 17 the next day, saw some of what happened. In a letter to his own grandson in 1836, Peter Edes recounted what he remembered of that event.

“I knew but little about it, as I was not admitted into their presence, for fear, I suppose, of their being known,” he wrote.

But he knew more than most.

He remembered that a number of gentlemen met in his father’s parlor in the afternoon before they destroyed the tea. Peter’s job was to make punch for them in another room. He filled the bowl several times.

(The punch bowl now belongs to the Massachusetts Historical Society.)

Eyewitness Account

The men stayed in the house until dark, he supposed to disguise themselves as Native Americans. When the sun set, they left the house and went to the wharves where the vessels lay.

Once the men left, Peter went into his father’s room. But Benjamin Edes wasn’t there. So Peter decided to walk to the wharves where he saw 2,000 people.

“The Indians worked smartly,” wrote Peter Edes.

“Some were in the hold immediately after the hatches were broken open, fixing the ropes to the tea-chests; others were hauling up the chests; and others stood ready with their hatchets to cut off the bindings of the chest and cast them overboard. I remained on the wharf till I was tired, and fearing some disturbance might occur went home, leaving the Indians working like good industrious fellows.”

Benjamin Edes did not fall into the hands of the British. During the Siege of Boston, Edes escaped arrest by disguising himself as a fisherman. He boarded a fishing boat and landed on one of the islands in Boston Harbor, from which he escaped to the mainland

He moved to Watertown, Mass., where he continued to publish the Gazette until 1798. Benjamin Edes died on Dec. 11, 1803.

How the Names Got Lost

Peter Edes later wrote that it was ‘a little surprising’ that the names of the Tea Party remained secret. [My] “father I believe, was the only person who had a list of them, and he always kept it locked up in his desk while living.

“After his death Benj. Austin (a Boston selectman) called upon my mother, and told her there was in his possession when living some very important papers belonging to the Whig party, which he wished not to be publicly known, and asked her to let him have the keys of the desk to examine it, which she delivered to him; he then examined it, and took out several papers, among which it was supposed he took away the list of the names of the tea-party, and they have not been known since.”

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This story was updated in 2024.

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The Clipper Ship That Built the Sailors Snug Harbor

The weatherbeaten old tars who found refuge in the Sailors Snug Harbor in Quincy, Mass., owed some of their comfortable retirement to a sensational clipper ship.

The Great Republic by James Buttersworth.

Capt. Josiah Bacon founded Sailors Snug Harbor in 1852 as a refuge for sailors ‘broken down by infirmities brought on by diseases in foreign clinics, expenses, and hardships.’

The Harbor was situated among grand old trees on a peninsula, and during most of the year the sailors ran a ferry back and forth across the Weymouth River.

Sailors Snug Harbor

Capt. Robert Bennet Forbes served as its first president. Forbes, a China trader and ship captain, got rich dealing in opium. He gave generously of his wealth, and his time, to charitable causes.

Robert Bennet Forbes

In October 1853, shipbuilder Donald McKay launched the Great Republic, a four-deck four-masted clipper barque, the largest wooden clipper ship ever built. It was a sensation. Boston schools and businesses closed for the launch, which attracted 50,000 spectators.

Forbes anticipated the Great Republic would draw a large crowd, and he thought of a way to take advantage of it.

On Oct. 8, 1853, Forbes wrote to McKay:

The Ferry-house and ferrymen in 1908, connected with the Sailors Snug Harbor at Germantown.

My dear Sir:-

As your ship, the Great Republic, is likely to be visited by thousands of admirers, I suggest that you make her the medium of doing a great service to an institution which is about going into operation, and of which I am, for want of a better, the presiding officer. The “Sailors’ Snug Harbor of Boston” has the sympathy of all those who take an interest in ships, and they would willingly pay a “York shilling” to see your ship and at the same time serve a benevolent object. If you approve of the suggestion, I will carry it out at once by sending a competent agent on board, and if any one should by mistake drop a dollar in the purse, I will give him credit for it.

McKay Replies

Donald McKay replied,

Dear Sir:

Yours requesting my concurrence in your very benevolent suggestion, that of having the privilege of collecting a small sum from the visitors to the Great Republic for the benefit of the “Sailors’ Snug Harbor” in Boston, has been received. I assure you that nothing will give me more pleasure than to afford you such an opportunity. This class of men have too long been neglected: they do the labor, they

sail the clippers of which we boast as a nation; and any little reward that they may be able to collect along this way, will be highly pleasing to me. And I hope the public will contribute in this way, and feel it to be a privilege to be able to build up a bulwark to shelter the weather-beaten sailor, now no longer able to earn his bread by his perilous profession.

Great Republic

The Great Republic opened to public inspection in Boston Harbor, and $1,000 was collected for the sailors retirement home.

Then the clipper ship sailed to New York, where she again opened to inspection. The exhibition raised more than $4,000.

On Dec. 27, 1853, the Great Republic burned to the water’s edge in a dock fire. Insurers then declared her a total loss. People said McKay never got over the loss of his clilpper.

Connecticut sea captain Nathaniel Palmer then bought the Great Republic and rebuilt her.

Then on July 14, 1856, the cornerstone of the Sailors Snug Harbor was laid.

This story last updated in 2022.

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Ithiel Town Revives Greek Architecture and Covered Bridges

New England would look a lot different today if Ithiel Town hadn’t created covered truss bridges and Greek Revival architecture.

The Bath-Haverhill Bridge in Grafton County, N.H. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

An architect as well as a builder, he popularized the Greek Revival style in the early 19^th century, though he also worked in the Federalist and Gothic styles.

Ithiel Town

He was born in Thompson, Conn., on Oct. 3, 1784, to Archelaus and Martha Johnson Town. He studied with Asher Benjamin in Boston. His first known commission was the Asa Gray House in 1810.

Asa Gray House. Photo by By George M. Cushing, photographer. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The Federal style house was built in Cambridge, Mass., for the first head of the Harvard botanic garden. Asa Gray, the most important American botanist of the 19th century, lived in the house later on. So did English ornithologist Thomas Nuttall. The National Register of Historic Places lists the house, also a National Historic Landmark.

Samuel Wadsworth Russell House. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

In 1828, he designed the Samuel Wadsworth Russell House in Middletown, Conn., for Samuel Russell, founder of the largest American trading house in China. The house set a new standard for luxury and grandeur and also helped launch the Greek Revival style of architecture in the United States.

Wadsworth Atheneum by Carol Highsmith. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Mansions, Churches, Public Buildings

The next year, Ithiel Town and Andrew Jackson Davis formed one of the country’s first architectural firms. They designed the state capitol in New Haven and, in Hartford, City Hall and the Wadsworth Atheneum.

One of Town’s most important early works was Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven, Conn. Built from 1814-16, it was one of the first Gothic Revival churches in the United States.

The Skinner-Trowbridge House. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Town built a number of mansions, including his own, on Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven. Charles Dickens called it ‘the most beautiful street in America,’ and the two George Bushes lived on it for a time. It was part of a development by James Hillhouse, a congressman and Yale’s treasurer for 50 years. . He laid out a road and then planted elm trees along it. Houses had to be set back 50 feet from the street and homeowners had to hire a leading architect to design their homes. So Aaron Skinner commissioned Town to build the house above. Yale bought it in 1978 and restored it for the International Center for Finance.

Ithiel Town’s Lattice Truss

Interior of the Contoocook Railroad Bridge showing the Town lattice truss. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Ithiel Town was an engineer as well as an architect. In 1820 he received the patent for a wooden truss bridge known as Town’s Lattice Truss. It used criss-crossing diagonal planks fastened to the top and the bottom of the structure, which eliminated the need for large, expensive timbers.

The Bath-Haverhill Bridge is the oldest existing Town lattice truss, and one of the oldest covered bridges in the country. It was in service for 170 years until it was bypassed in 1999.

Ithiel Town died on June 13, 1844.

This story was updated in 2022.

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‘A Most Heavenly Night’ for Celia Thaxter

When Celia Thaxter realized her marriage wasn’t working, she moved back home – to a small archipelago off the coasts of Maine and New Hampshire called the Isles of Shoals.

She had grown up there, the daughter of lighthouse keeper Thomas Laighton.

Celia Thaxter’s Garden, by Childe Hassam (detail).

She was born June 29, 1835 in nearby Portsmouth, N.H. At 16 she married her tutor, Levi Thaxter, a Harvard graduate 11 years older than she. They moved to Newtonville, Mass., which she hated. But while living on the mainland, she did publish poetry and stories in the prestigious Atlantic Monthly magazine. She often wrote about her beloved Isles of Shoals.

As her marriage was not going well, Celia Thaxter began to spend more time on the islands helping her family with the hotel they ran. Her stories about the islands attracted to the hotel artists, writers and intellectuals, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Sarah Orne Jewett and Childe Hassam.

Celia Thaxter

Hassam painted several paintings of Celia and her garden. John Greenleaf Whittier was especially kind to her. The artist William Morris Hunt was a close family friend who visited the Isles frequently — and died there. Rose Lamb, a portrait painter, was his student and a friend of Celia Thaxter’s.

Letters of Celia Thaxter

After her death, Lamb and Annie Fields compiled a book of her letters. In the introduction, they wrote, “Her “parlor,” as it was called, was a milieu quite as interesting as any of the “salons” of the past.”

Celia Thaxter wrote frequently from the island to her women friends, including Fields, Lamb and Sarah Orne Jewett.

On Aug. 29, 1889, she wrote a letter to Rose Lamb:

To-night there is the most delicious slender red crescent sinking slowly in the west, throwing a mysterious glimmer on the calm sea; there isn’t a whisper of wind, and it is balmy and beautiful; windows and doors all open; a most heavenly night. Now people begin to come and I must stop.

Celia Thaxter died Aug. 25, 1894.

This story last updated in 2022.

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The Amazing Baby Boom of Billerica, Mass.

When the War of 1812 broke out, the Town of Billerica, Mass., was in the middle of an extraordinary baby boom.

The Savage Family, c. 1779, by Edward Savage, courtesy Worcester Art Museum

William Manning, a Billerica farmer, Revolutionary War soldier and author, fathered 13 children with his wife Sarah. But he wasn’t the only one.

Twelve other families in the town had 13 children. Five had 14 offspring and one had 15. Twenty-six families each had 10 children, 20 families had 11 children and 24 families had 12 children. The largest family had 21 children by two wives. That meant 90 families accounted for 1,043 children.

The average Billerica family had an average of 11.6 children per family. The town’s population grew almost exclusively because of its fecundity. In 1810, the population of the entire town grew to 1,289.

Enormous Colonial Families

The large families of Billerica were typical of early New England. The region had the world’s lowest annual death rate, less than one percent. And its birth rate exceeded 3 percent.

William Phips, one of many siblings. Also, governor.

The New Hampshire Historical Society in 1824 cited examples of enormous colonial families. Collections, Historical and Miscellaneous and Monthly Literary Journal, Vol III (1824), edited by J. Farmer and J.B. Moore, referred to Boston doctor Cotton Mather. Mather mentioned one woman who had at least 22 children and another who had at least 23 — by one husband. Of those, 19 survived to adulthood. Mather also mentioned a third woman who had 27 children.

Cotton Mather

The historical journal also cited the mother of Massachusetts governor (William) Phips, who had 25 children, including 21 sons.

Rev. John Sherman, the first minister of Watertown, had 26 children by two wives, included 20 by his last wife. Rev. Samuel Willard, a minister in Groton, Mass., and Boston who served as vice president of Harvard college, had 20 children.

Major Simon Willard, his father, one of the first settlers of Concord, Mass., had 17 children. All grew to adulthood and had families of their own.

Mather himself had 15 children by two of his three wives. (His father, unironically, was named Increase.) Only six lived to adulthood and only two outlived him.

Why the Baby Boom?

New England’s harsh winters have been suggested as a reason for the low death rate, as they killed off disease-bearing insects. New Englanders also had plenty of food and, by then, a high standard of living. Finally, New Englanders were expected to marry young, and they were not expected to practice birth control.

The high birth rate accounted for the uniquely Yankee character of the region. Between 1640 and 1845, immigration to the New England colonies only reached about one percent.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Eastman Johnson Paints ‘The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket’

The name of Eastman Johnson is inscribed above the entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City for a reason: He co-founded the world-famous institution.

Detail from The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket (1880)

Eastman Johnson was a Maine-born artist whose politically connected father brought him into contact with well-known portrait subjects.

Eastman Johnson self portrait

He earned a reputation for painting scenes of everyday life and portraits of famous figures such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Eastman Johnson

He was born July 29, 1824 in Lovell, Maine, and grew up in Fryeburg and Augusta.

He was the eighth and last child of Mary Kimball Chandler Johnson and Phillip Carrigan Johnson. His father served as Maine’s secretary of state for two years before moving to Washington, D.C. as an appointee to the U.S. Naval Department.

Eastman had worked as an apprentice to a Boston lithographer in 1840. He joined his family in Washington, D.C., at about 20. There he earned a living drawing crayon portraits , including John Quincy Adams and Dolly Madison

He studied in Europe before returning to New York City. He then made his name with his masterpiece, a painting called Negro Life at the South, a street scene of slaves in Washington, D.C.

Negro Life at the South

Eastman Johnson sympathetically depicted the plight of slaves. While on an extended visit to Wisconsin, he painted members of the Ojibwe tribe. He also painted genre scenes – everyday scenes of ordinary people – of husking bees, sugaring off, an old stagecoach and cranberry harvesting. In his time people called him The American Rembrandt.

Sugaring Off at the Camp, Fryeburg, Maine

Cranberry Harvest

Johnson, always on the lookout for rural subjects, found inspiration on Nantucket and surroundings in 1870. As a native New Englander he wanted to paint outdoor New England, and the cranberry harvesters did it for him. Art critics consider it a significant painting because of Johnson’s evocative technique. He emphasizes the light and the landscape, as well as the sense of a community at home on the land.

From his vacation home on Nantucket, Johnson wrote in 1879, “I was taken with my cranberry fit as soon as I arrived and have done nothing else.”

Eastman Johnson died April 5, 1906.

This story was updated in 2021.

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