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Joseph Dyar Speaks Too Freely of the Boston Tea Party

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After heaving 340 chests of tea into Boston Harbor on Dec. 16, 1773, the band of patriots who carried out the raid marched past British Admiral John Montagu, who had come ashore to witness the unrest.

joseph-dyarMontagu could have put a stop to the tea party, but had not ordered any British response, he said, for fear of injuring innocents. Still he exchanged taunts with the passing mob – many dressed as Indians – warning that they would have to pay for their deeds.

While the complete list of the Americans who undertook the Boston Tea Party has never been found, Joseph Dyar long said he belonged to them. He also said his wife helped make the copper coloring that the patriots used to disguise themselves as Indians.

Joseph Dyar, Blabbermouth

Unfortunately for Dyar he made his claims too close to the ears of British soldiers. Dyar, a seafaring man from the North End of Boston, made ready to set sail in early 1774. The British, however, arrested him. The official charge: he had encouraged British soldiers to desert.

Dyar was sent to England aboard a vessel carrying Admiral Montagu. His family knew nothing of his arrest, assuming he had gone to sea as planned. Far from telling all about the Tea Party – if he actually knew it – Dyar did something quite different. He swore under oath that a British colonel tried to bribe him to frame John Hancock as the instigator of the Tea Party. He swore also that Admiral Montagu repeated the offer while taking him to England.

John Andrews was a Boston merchant who kept his relatives in Philadelphia informed of the goings on in Boston, He told them Dyar explained that his original statements about the Tea Party could be chalked up as his “being an artful fellow.” He also pretended “to know everything.”

Persuaded that he knew nothing, the British sent Dyar home in October of 1774. British officials conferred with Hancock and assured him that no one tried to frame him.

Not the Expected Outcome

Dyar was furious with the outcome. He demanded that the British pay for their efforts to bribe him. When that failed he announced he would restore his honor. Dyar proceeded to the Liberty Tree and confronted two British officers. He mistakenly thought they had participated in his arrest.

First Dyar tried to shoot them. Then he tried to attack them with a cutlass that he wrestled from one of them.

As Andrews recounted the fight, “Captain Montresor ran behind a cart to escape his fury.” (Montresor’s daughter would marry Ethan Allen.) Dyar then flung the pistols at him and run off flourishing the colonel’s cutlass, Andrews wrote. He then proceeded directly to Cambridge and went into the room where the Provincial Congress were sitting. “[He] told them he had got one of the swords that Lord North had sent over to kill them with,” wrote Andrews.

john-hancock

John Singleton Copley painted this portrait of John Hancock around 1771. Courtesy Massachusetts Historical Society.

The Provincial Congress denied Dyar the justice he sought. “When they came to know what he had been doing, they immediately sent for an officer and committed him,” wrote Andrews.

Dyar would go on to serve in the American Revolution, ferrying supplies to Long Island for the Continental Army. He was captured nine times by the British. He died in 1783 from the effects of beatings administered by his British captors.

This story last updated in 2021.

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Thomas Hutchinson Tries To Get His Son a Job

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Massachusetts’ former colonial Gov. Thomas Hutchinson lived in unhappy exile in England while the American Revolution raged in his native land.

He’d left Boston after suffering all kinds of abuse from the rebels. They ransacked his mansion, burned him in effigy and seized his country estate for use as an army barracks. HA widower, he left for England with some of his children and their families in the spring of 1774. Thomas Gage took over as governor.

A few weeks after the shot heard ’round the world, a distressed Thomas Hutchinson wrote a letter to the Earl of Dartmouth.

Thomas Hutchinson Writes

In the letter, written on May 3, 1775, he apologized for badgering the earl. He explained that his eldest children still lived in Massachusetts with their young children. They had left their estates because friends advised them to move to Boston due to “the danger from the rage of the people.” In Boston the British troops then under siege could protect them. But his estate in Boston, “which otherwise would have contributed to their support, is rendered of little or no value by the Boston Port Act.”

He then explained his other three children lived with him in London, but wished to return. His youngest son, however, wanted to settle in England. “He has flattered himself, and has been encouraged, that on his father’s account, he should obtain an appointment here, which would contribute to his support, and to his settlement in the world.”

Hutchinson then did a bit of groveling. “I know there were so many expectations of places in England whose pretences were superior to mine, that I despaired of any appointment for him here,” he wrote. But then he found out that Sir Thomas Milles had decided to quit as receiver general for the British Army.

So Hutchinson begged Lord North for that job for his son, he wrote. “His Lordship encouraged me that he would comply with my request as soon as sir T.M. could be provided for in England,” he wrote. But then he hadn’t learned that “Sir T” would get a new commission. That left little hope that his son would succeed him until next spring, because ships would not leave for Quebec (presumably to fight the war in North America) until then.

Plea for Relief

“If one of my children could be provided for, it would be a great relief,” he wrote. Hutchinson acknowledged to the earl that the government had assured him of support and provided it. But, he wrote, “the charge of living is so much greater in England than in America.” He avoided every unnecessary expense, he wrote. But the cost of moving his family and the cost of housekeeping exceeded his allowance by several hundred pounds.

Thomas Hutchinson

“I should be ashamed to mention this to your Lordship,” he wrote. However, he wanted to show he wasn’t asking with “an avaricious or accumulating view.”

“I remember, my Lord, that I applied for a discretionary leave to come to England,” he wrote. But he wouldn’t have done it if he’d known “it would be a prejudice to the public service.” ”

And then he referred to the death of his lieutenant governor, Andrew Oliver. (Oliver died on March 3, 1774.) saying he laid aside all thoughts of leaving. He had “anticipated every difficulty and hazard” he’d experience if the government didn’t send armed forces to protect him. If he’d known additional forces would arrive, he would have thought himself more secure. He would also have been able to have vigorously “opposed attempts up on the Constitution.”

“I pray your Lordship’s consideration of any case in all its circumstances, and am very respectfully, Thomas Hutchinson,” he concluded.

Aftermath

Did the earl help his son get a job? We don’t know. We do know Thomas Hutchinson died in England a bitter and lonely exile. He grieved for the loss of his daughter, Peggy, in 1777.

During his last years he wrote a history of the colony of Massachusetts, publishing two volumes in his lifetime. The third was published posthumously.

Today, the Trustees of the Reservation own a piece of Hutchinson’s estate in Milton, known as Governor Hutchinson’s Field. The National Park Service lists it on the National Register of Historic Places, and the public may visit.

This story was updated in 2022.

 

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