A rare treasure of American history!
The Boston Tea Party
Eons ago when I was in the 4th grade, everybody learned the basics of the Boston Tea Party. The gist being that back in December 1773, colonists in Massachusetts had become irate over taxes imposed by Great Britain, the “mother country.” Every effort to rectify the problem had failed – and now GB imposed another tax – on tea, which just about everyone drank.
Tea was the most popular drink of choice in the colonies, coming via the British East India Company, a consortium of British businessmen with holdings in Asia for more than a century. They were making a fortune.
One of the more obnoxious conditions of being a British “colony” (as opposed to being a nation of its own), was that all trade had to be with (or via) England. None of the 13 colonies were permitted to trade with France, or the Netherlands, or Spain directly. Even trade between the colonies was limited. This made competition and choices, including competitive pricing, illegal.
Great Britain had imposed and rescinded taxes on several items over the past decade, but refused to allow the colonists any say in the government, i.e. taxation without representation. GB, pressed for money, kept issuing new taxes. It had become a boiling issue.
The Tea Boxes
Tea bags as we know them now, were more than a century away in the 1770s. Loose leaves were packed in thick wooden boxes, about a cubic foot in size. A lot of leaves could be packed in a box, and could weigh as much as 100 pounds or more. The Beaver, Eleanor and Dartmouth each carried more than a hundred boxes. Once delivered to their destination, tea merchants repackaged the tea into much smaller containers for public purchase. With tax.
Taking matters into their own hands, a group calling themselves The Sons of Liberty disguised themselves with feathers and paint, waited till dark, and boarded the three ships holding a large cargo of the now-hated tea. They went below to the cargo holds, passed the boxes from person to person, slashed open the boxes with an axe, and dumped the tea in the river along with the broken box. Of course, nobody saw anybody or anything. Nobody came forward. Ever.
The Following Day…
The Charles River was full of tea leaves, broken boxes and pieces of wood, lapping along the shores near Dorchester Heights. Fifteen-year-old John Robinson was walking along the shore in the early morning and saw an unusual object half buried in the sand. He knew immediately what it was. The “adventures” of the previous night electrified Boston, and nearly everyone knew about it.
Robinson had found one of the tea boxes. The tea had been dumped, but the box remained intact, except for the lid. It was about 10”x13”x12”. He took the box home, and kept it for the rest of his life.
The 200 Year Brigade of Hands
Robinson eventually married, but was only 46 when he died. His wife remarried some time later, and as “Grandma Holden” the box remained in her possession in upstate New York for more than 40 years. Shortly before her death, she passed the box to Solomon Lurana of Wisconsin, a relative by marriage, and one who a) had been very close to the family, and b) had an abiding love and understanding of history, and what the box represented. He was also diligent about keeping documented information regarding its provenance.
Solomon Lurana kept the box for nearly thirty years before giving it to his 8-year-old orphaned granddaughter, Mary Lurana Cade, who he was raising. She used the box to store her dolls, and some dress-up old clothes. At some point, the family cat used the box as a home for her kittens.
In 1896, Mary Lurana Cade married Isaiah Ford and moved to Knoxville, TN, and started a family: son William Cade Ford, and Helen Ford Waring. Then they relocated to Texas. The box went with them.
Mary Lurana’s husband died in 1917, and she went to live with her daughter and son-in-law. Mother and daughter were both educators, with a strong interest in history – and, of course, the box that had been in their direct/collateral family since 1773. It was Helen who diligently researched and documented the chain of “ownership” through nearly 200 years. Helen Waring died in 1961, and the tea box was assigned to her brother William Cade Ford.
The Robinson Half-Chest
By the time of the USA Bicentennial in 1976, the Smithsonian Institution learned of the existence of a 200-year-old relic from the Boston Tea Party, and tracked it down – in Texas! An elderly William Ford gave permission for it to be displayed in an exhibit that opened in 1974. It was officially “renamed” the Robinson Half-Chest.
After the exhibit, the “half-chest” was properly crated and returned to Betty Ford Goodman (her father had died during the Smithsonian interim). It sat in a bank vault for a couple of years, till the family decided to bring it back home. The Goodman children remember taking it to school for show-and-tell.
Unto Today
Boston is a city awash in history, and treasures its relics. In 2004, plans were made to establish a new historical “venue”: a Boston Tea Party Exhibit and Museum. The Goodman family contacted the proper Tea Party Museum conservators, and offered their “box”. The conservators were delighted.
The venue opened in 2012, and the “box” became a star! There’s an interactive lecture-program, a replica ship with tethered styrofoam “boxes” for tossing overboard, a charmer of a little museum with the “real box” – and, of course, a tea room.
Yes, the tickets are expensive. Yes, there is a TAX, too!
But go see it anyway! It’s nifty!
Sources:
A Box Worth Keeping
https://www.britannica.com/event/Boston-Tea-Party
https://www.masshist.org/revolution/teaparty.php
