An original bottle of tea from the Boston Tea Party is on display to mark the 250th anniversary of the seminal moment in American history this Saturday.
The Massachusetts Historical Society is sharing their original artifacts from the night of Dec. 16, 1773, including the tea, a letter written by John Adams about the iconic moment and the Edes family punch bowl used to celebrate later.
"There's probably a more professional way to say it, but I'll just say — they're cool. And we felt like it was our time to show off," said Catherine Allgor, president of the historical society.
The society, headquartered on Boylston Street, is the first organization dedicated to preserving American history in the United States and is free to the public. Allgor said it has several thousand artifacts, ranging from little coins to big swords, in addition to 14 million manuscript pages documenting life in Boston.
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Among those artifacts are original pieces of history from the Boston Tea Party.
"Here in Boston, the Boston Tea Party is central, not just to our local history and pride of place, but to the coming of the American Revolution," said Peter Drummey, the society's chief historian and librarian.
More on Saturday's Boston Tea Party anniversary
Drummey named the exhibition, "The Dye is Cast," meaning "no turning back," after a line in John Adam's letter, written the next day.
The letter is front and center in the exhibition, next to the bottle of tea and the punch bowl.
The Tea Party was an iconic moment of civil disobedience in Boston leading up to the American Revolution. Colonialists boarded three British ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into the Boston Harbor in protest of the 1773 Tea act.
"The morning after the Tea Party, so much tea had been thrown into the harbor that people describe the harbor as looking like a mown field — like a hayfield had been cut — because there was so much tea floating on top of the harbor," Drummey said. "It floated across the harbor to Dorchester and someone scooped up some of that and kept it."
"The Dye Is Cast" exhibition is centered around six people — Paul Revere, Phillis Wheatley, Dr. Joseph Warren, Prince Hall, John Rowe and Thomas Hutchinson — and their unique personal perspectives and accounts during this iconic event. Some opposed the protest, some were in favor, others were not even interested in it.
The exhibition spans a series of connected rooms and describes how the Tea Party took place and how anniversaries of the event have been celebrated in the past.
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This year's anniversary is getting attention well behind The Hub. In fact, the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum is collecting loose-leaf tea from around the world and will conduct a reenactment on Saturday. They also have the only known remaining tea chest from the night 250 years ago.
For the Massachusetts Historical Society, their exhibition about past is meant to spark conversation about the now.
"I just realize how important and how urgent knowing our past is as we contemplate our present and our future," Allgor said. "We never know what historic times we're living in."
"The Die is Cast" will be on display through Feb. 29, 2024.
