Teas of the Boston Tea Party

SAMUEL PECK was a cooper, and in 1789 did business at Hallowell's ship-yard, near the foot of Milk Street. He was a prominent Son of Liberty, also a leading and influential member of the North End Caucus. He was one of the guard on the "Dartmouth," on the night of November 30, 1773, and on the morning following the destruction of the tea, his apprentices noticed traces of red paint behind his ears. He was thought to have been one of the leaders in the affair. He joined the Masonic Lodge of St. Andrew in 1756.

JOHN RUSSELL was by trade a mason, and died in Boston, in 1778. His son, the well-known journalist, Colonel Benjamin Russell, though only a school-boy at the time, remembered seeing, through the window of the wood-house, his father and Mr. Thomas Moore, his neighbor, besmearing each other's faces with lampblack and red ochre.

JOSEPH PEARSE PALMER was the only son of General Joseph Palmer, a prominent actor in the Revolutionary drama in Massachusetts, and Mary, the sister of Judge Richard Cranch, who resided in that part of Braintree called Germantown. Before the war he dealt in West India goods and hardware, at the town dock. Of his share in the tea party his widow says: "One evening, about ten o'clock, hearing the gate and door open, I opened the parlor door, and there stood three stout-looking Indians. I screamed, and should have fainted, but recognized my husband's voice saying, 'Don't be frightened, Betty, it is I. We have only been making a little salt-water tea.' His two companions were Foster Condy and Stephen Bruce. Soon after this, Secretary Flucker called upon my husband, and said to him, 'Joe, you are so obnoxious to the British Government, that you had better leave town.' Accordingly we left town, and went to live in part of my father's house, in Watertown." During the war, Mr. Palmer served in Boston and in Rhode Island, first as brigade major, and next as quartermaster-general. Soon after his father's death, in 1788, he went to Vermont, with Colonel Keith, to examine the facilities for establishing themselves in some branch of the iron business. Shortly after he reached Windsor he lost his life, having accidentally fallen from a bridge, then erecting over the Connecticut. He left a numerous family. His daughter, Mary, married Royal Tyler, of Vt. Member Massachusetts Lodge, 1773.

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