Boston Tea Party

With the recent Tea Parties being held around the country to protest government spending (and resulting taxation) I am reminded of the Cape Cod folks that participated in the Boston Tea Party on Dec 16, 1773. My Great4-Grandfather Capt Edmund Sears (1712-1796) was listed as a member of the colonists who threw boxes of tea into Boston Harbor. He was definitely for independence and all four of his sons served in the war supporting the patriots from Yarmouth. Tea smuggling was big business in the middle 1700s.

Upon Edmund's return to the Cape soon after the Tea Party, (as a sea captain he had been long absent from home), on entering the house he went straight to the "bowfat," and without saying a word to any one, seized the teapot and caddy, and threw them into the garden with a crash.His astonished wife whispered to the children, "your poor father has come home crazy."He then proclaimed that from theat time henceforth none of his family were to drink tea, or wear upon their persons any articles of British manufacture.

Sorry Grandpa but I guess I am violating family tradition by becoming an avid tea drinker. Maybe he would excuse this since we won the war and later Cape Cod family fortunes and the shipping industry of the 19th century depended on Clipper ships racing from Boston and New York to China to bring home the latest tea harvest.

My current cuppa is from a box of twenty different flavors I received for Christmas labeled Boston Tea Party tea from the Boston Tea Company, established 1949. The English Breakfast variety is very delicious and the only thing puzzling me now is that the back of the box says
Boston Tea Company
Hackensack, NJ www.bostontea.com


"Some like pictures of women and some likes 'orses best,
But I like pictures of ships, by Gum, and you can keep the rest,
And I don't care if it's North or South, the Trades or the China Sea,
Shortened down or everything set, close-hauled or running free;
But paint me a ship as is like a ship and that'll do for me."
http://www.eraoftheclipperships.com/shipsstoreweb.html

Enjoy a cuppa tea soon!