Fulton's Role in the Tea Party

This is an IiHart podcast Guaranteed human. Living with a rare autoimmune condition brings uncertainty, but it can also create community. In season six of Untold Stories, Life with a severe autoimmune coondition, they go beyond MG and CIDP, as host Martine Hackett welcomes stories from other conditions like myositis and IGN into the conversation. Untold Stories is produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenics. Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a severe Autoimmune condition on the iHart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts Hey everybody, we are getting ready to go on a trip. We're not packed yet, but our brains definitely are because we have a trip to Bajamar on the horizon. and it's kind of all I can think about. I'm so excited about the food. There are amazing restaurants and lounges there that I'm gonna sample everything I possibly can. 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Talk to your doctor. callall one eight hundred five four five five nine sevven nine or visit zbound. liily d. com Saturday Today is july fourth, twenty twenty six, which is the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence here in the US So for today's Saturday classic, I wanted to pick something at least related to the Revolutionary War That is our episode about Sarah Bradley Fulton, who is sometimes called the Mother of the Boston Ta Party. This was recorded in the run up to that two hundred fiftieth anniversary This episode originally came out on december thirteenth, twenty twenty three. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of IiHart Radio Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and I'm Holly Fry. The two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Tea Party is right around the corner on december sixteenth, this year, which is twenty twenty three. There've been various events related to this anniversary already leading up to a commemoration on the afternoon and evening of the sixteenth and the plan for that is to culminate in a re enactment of dumping the British East India compompany's tea into Boston Harbor There's an episode on the Boston Tea Party in the Achive from way back in two thousand eight when the show was only about six months old and was just almost a completely different podcast from what it is now And while I definitely don't encourage people to take the name, stuff you missed in history class completely literally, you can't really describe the Boston Tea Party as lesser known. At least not in the United States At the same time, I wanted to do something connected to all of this and eventually I landed on Sarah Bradley Fulton, who is sometimes called the mother of the Boston Tea Party. What we know about Sarah Bradley Fulton is kind of a series of anecdotes They mostly trace back to the same sources And Th those can't really be corroborated. We can't prove that they didn't happen, but we also can't prove that they did So that is where we will start The first written mention, at least that we know of, connecting Sarah Bradley Fulton to the Boston Tea Party is from eighteen seventy three It was written by Eliza M. Gill for the Boston Tea Party's Centennial, and it was printed in the Boston Evening Traveler a day later. Gill was born in eighteen fifty one and had been a schoolteacher before going to work for the city of Medford, Massachusetts, and she was also active in local history. She described the content of her letter as something quote partarted to me by descendants still living of men who took part in the Boston Tea Party So this letter includes some of the same basic points as our main source of information on Sarah Bradley Fulton That was written by Helen T. Wilde about twenty five years later. Thereo whole lot of lake recently written articles about Sarah Bradley Fulton that are point for point this article Wilde was born in Medford in eighteen sixty. She also worked as a school teacher before eventually going to work for the city first as a clerk and then as a tax assessor She and Gil knew one another. Both of them held leadership roles in the Medford Historical Society, and both of them were among the founders of Medford's chapter of The Daughters of the American Revolution was named for Sarah Bradley Fulton And when that chapter was first founded, Wild was its secretary and Gill was historian. This piece on Fulton was written for the eighteen ninety seven inauguration of the Sarah Bradley Fulton chapter of the DAR, and it was later printed in the Medford Historical Record and in American Monthly magazine And just about everything that comes up in articles about Sarah Bradley Fulton today traces back to this one piece Gill had not named the descendant still living that she talked to in writing her letter to the Boston Eing traveler, other than saying that it was one of the descendants of Sarah's husband John And Wilde doesn't name her sources in her piece either But Fulton's grandson, also named John Fulton, had been profiled by the Boston Globe the year before, and he told some similar stories about his grandmother U As a side note This Boston Globe article includes a three paragraph quotation. that is presented as though it is in Sarah Bradley Fulton's own voice and words It's not totally clear whether this was something she actually said or wrote or if this quotation was more like a literary device. passage is going to come up again later The article also describes John Fulton. as walking, quote, arm in arm with a modern analyst So could that modern analyst have been Wilde or Gill or someone else completely different? Who can say we don't really know And just to be clear, that's not analyst like someone who analyzes things. It's analyst ANN AL, like someone who is involved in the annals of history. Right. There are some discrepancies between what Eliza M. Gill wrote and Helen T. Wild's piece a couple of decades later. Like according to Gill's letter Sarah Bradley and John Fulton were not married yet when the Boston Tea Party happened. But according to Wilde, they were Wilde is correct. We also don't really know the explanation for the discrepancies, like if the information came from different people or if Wilde and Gill each talked to the same person and their recollection changed over the years, or if new documentation was unethed or some other possibility Regardless, what we're talking about today was definitely part of local lore in Medford and Fulton family lore by the mid to late nineteenth century But there's no direct evidence to substantiate a lot of it and no corroborating accounts from the same time There were no friends of Sarah Bradley Fulton who wrote about her in their diary that we have unearthed so far to kind of back up these stories. Although some of the Bradleys were documented as being actively involved with the colonists uprising, there are no written mentions of Sarah Bradley Fulton or her family members in connection to the Boston Tea Party Until about a hundred years after the fact Her grandson John was in his thirties when she died and he did know her, but that was also decades after the Boston Tea Party happened and then the Boston Globe profile and Wild'speeace for the DAR Those are written another sixty more years or so after her death. There are also some details that seem maybe a little questionable We will talk about them We do know that Sarah Bradley Fulton was a real person. She was born Sarah Bradley on december twenty fourth, seventeen forty in Dorchester, Massachusetts Her birth was registered with the town of Dorchester, although her last name in the registry is speed Bradley B R AD L E Y instead of BR AD L E E Allegedly, the spelling change was intentional because there were so many Bradleys that it was getting hard to keep up with who was related to who. At the time, Dorchester was its own town, but it was annexed by the city of Boston in eighteen seventy. In seventeen sixty two, so skipping ahead quite a bit Sarah Bradley married John Fulton Later, they moved to Medford, where they lived for the rest of their lives They had at least ten children together, with seven or eight of them surviving to adulthood. I found slightly different names and counts among different sources A few years after getting married, Sarah Bradley Fulton reportedly became active in the daughters of Liberty As with the more widely known sons of Liberty, the origins of the daughters of Liberty are pretty murky It also seems like the name Daughters of Liberty was used for established organizations, as well as more broadly for women who were in one way or another, working toward the same overall goals, that is resisting British taxation and advocating for the rights and freedoms of Britain's colonies in North America This is another case where we don't have specific documentation of what she was doing, but Both the sons and daughters of Liberty started to coalesce in seventeen sixty five in response to the StampP Act This is a tax on legal documents and printed materials that Parliament passed. in the wake of the seeven yearsars warar as a way for Britain to bring in more revenue All such documents had to be stamped as proof that the tax had been paid. And a lot of people in the colonies objected to this tax because of the tax itself and because the colonies did not have direct representation in the parliament that had passed it. So in other words No taxation without representation wake of protests and unrest and various threats against tax collectors and other British officials Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in seventeen sixty seven while stressing that it did have the right to tax the colonies Soon after, Parliament passed another set of acts, known as the Townsnd Acts One of the Townsend Acts was the Revenue Act, which established duties on various goods, including lead Gass, paper, paint and tea Another of the acts, the Indemnity Act was passed a few days later and lowered the duty on the East India compompany's tea imports into England and also refunded duties on tea that was then exported to the American colonies or to Ireland. This was really an effort to try to save the East India Company from financial collapse smmugglers were bringing a lot of Dutch East India Company tea into the colonies, which could be sold much cheaper than British East India Company tea with all its duties in place people were still not happy about these taxes though while the sons of Liberty were known for public and sometimes destructive protests like hanging officials in effigy and eventually the destruction of the tea later became known as the Boston Tea Party. The daughters of Liberty were not usually out in the streets demonstrating Instead, they wrote letters and gathered signatures. They organized boycottts of British goods, and they sought out locally made alternatives when the Sons of Liberty organized non importation associations in which merchants would agree not to import British goods The daughters of Liberty worked on ways to deal with all the resulting shortages Linen and cloth were among the goods that merchants refused to import from Britain So the daughters of Liberty's part in this included a lot of spinning Binning bees were already a thing, but especially in the Northeast, they became a widespread act of collective resistance among colonial women, as did wearing homespun. Like hereere's a description from the Boston Chronicle in seventeen sixty six, quote On the fourth instant, eighteen daughters of Liberty, young ladies of good reputation, assembled at the house of doctor Ephraim Bowen in this town in consequence of an invitation of that gentleman who had discovered a laudable zeal for the introducing home manufacturers. There they exhibited a fine example of industry by spinning from sunrise until dark and displayed a spirit for saving their sinking country rarely to be found among persons of more age and experience In the wake of all of this, the value of imports from Britain into the colonies dropped enormously between seventeen sixty seven and seventeen sixty eight Although this drop was largely focused in the north in terms of British imports, things didn't really change all that much in the south at all With the exception of the tax on tea, the Townsnd Act's taxes were repealed in seventeen seventy We're going to come back to the tea and the Boston tea party after we have a sponsor break Living with a rare autoimmune condition can bring a lot of uncertainty, but it can also bring people together in powerful ways. Tune in for season six of Untold Stories, Life with a severe autoimmune condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Arenics. This season, host Martine Hackett brings you fresh stories from people living with MG and CIDP and expands the conversation to people living with other rare conditions, like myositis and IgAM Through their stories, you'll learn what it's like to participate in clinical trials seeking new treatments, how connection fuels hope, and how people can support one another along the way. Because living with a rare disease isn't about getting through it, it's about moving forward together. Listen to Untold stories, life with a severe autoimmune condition on the IiHart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Guess who's back in the house The Old Gays return for seeason two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from IiHart's Ruby Studio in partnership with VV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert, McBill, and Jessse have in store this time around. They stt back down memory lane, navigating life loveo, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. 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There is a lot of great nightlife that you can get into like the John Baptiste Jazz Club, which I am also very excited about. If you are a family going to visit, there's a fifteen acre water park and what I am also excited about shark and sea turtle encounters Bring them on and don't even get me started about the daily flamingo parade. If you're into sporty stuff, all there. There is a golf course, tennis, pickleball, anything you can think of. Tracy's gonna spend a lot of time at the spa and we arere gonna to spend a lot of time enjoying ourselves. There's excited and then there is Baha Mar vacation exxcited. Start planning your perfect getaway at bahamar dot com d Fidu Peace, the rise and fall of the Frugal Gourmet is an independent documentary available at ibidupeeace dot com slash history. Use code history for twenty percent off. I don't know if you remember the Frugal Gourmet from the eighties and nineties on PBS, but it was very popular at my house and imagine my surprise to discover that there is a very complicated history underneath all of that pleasantness Watch it as a documentary feature film or go deep with the full five episode series, exclusively direct from the filmmaker at ibidupeace. com slash history, code history for twenty percent off. While Sarah Bradley Fulton and her husband John established their home in Medford, which is northwest of Boston on the Mystic River Her brother, Nathaniel Bradley, continued to live in Boston He was a carpenter and a craftsman. and according to Helen T. Wilde's account Friends and neighbors gathered at his home at the corner of Hollace in Tremont Streets for codfish suppers on Saturday nights In her words, his carpenter's shop and kitchen became, quote, meeting places for Boston's most devoted patriots. And again, according to Wilde's account Bradley home in Boston was one of the places where men prepared for the Boston tea party. although that name was not coined until decades after it happened The Boston Tea Party circled back to Britain's efforts to keep the British East India Company afloat in terms of both revenue and offloading enormous amounts of tea that were sitting in London warehouses unsold ennormous, as in about seventeen million pounds of unsold tea Parliament passed the Tea Act on may tenth, seventeen seventy three, which gave the British East India Company the right to ship tea directly to the colonies, rather than having to ship it to Britain first The company was also allowed to employ its own agents to sell tea, rather than going through colonial merchants Since it was no longer having to ship tea to England and pay a duty on it there, this meant the British East India Company could start selling tea in the colonies for less than the price of smuggled Dutch tea But to a lot of people in the colonies, access to cheaper tea was not what mattered. It was that tax. they would be paying if they bought it Although the Townseencts tax on tea had still been in place between seventeen seventy and seventeen seventy three, and there were still a lot of people in the colonies who refused to drink tea during those years The T Act really revived people's anger and frustration over this issue. A lot of people in the colonies really doubled down on their boycott of tea and the daughters of Liberty promoted alternatives sometimes called Liberty tea, including mint, raspberry leaf, and various herbs and roots Ships arriving in American ports were met by angry mobs and forced to leave, still laden with their tea On november twenty eighth, seventeen seventy three, a ship called The Dartmouth arrived in Boston The Eleanor arrived on december second and the Beaver on december fifteenth Each of these ships carried more than one hundred chests of East India compompany tea but the ships themselves were owned by local merchants Newspapers had started reporting on shipments of tea that were headed for the colonies in October, so the sons of Liberty had been holding public meetings on the issue for weeks before these ships started arriving. at locations, including the Liberty Tree near Boston Common and Faniel Hall. These meetings grew after the Dartmouth arrived, with organizers moving to the Old South Meeting house to accommodate the larger crowd People like the Sons of Liberty demanded that these ships be sent back to England The collllector of customs refused to let them leave the harbor without the duties being paid on the tee Of course, the people who owned these ships did not want to pay a duty on a product that could not be unloaded or sold While officials in other port cities had allowed ships carrying tea to return to England, Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor Thomas Hutchinson insisted that the ships remain in the port until the tea was unloaded And he stationed two gunships at the harbor to prevent their departure. He was not interested in de escalating the situation at all The last of a long series of public meetings was held at the Old South Meeting House on december sixteenth, seventeen seventy three That day, the governor was once again asked if the ships could be sent back to England, and he once again refused There's a little bit of fuzziness regarding the sequence of events from here There's a popular story that Samuel Adams gave a prearranged signal for the men to go down to the harbor to destroy the tea by saying This meeting can do nothing more to save the country This is another thing that didn't appear in writing until almost a hundred years after the fact Regardless, shortly after getting this last update on the governor's refusal, a group of men boarded the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver broke open the more than three hundred crates of tea they were carrying and dumped the contents into the harbor At least some of these men were dressed in costumes meant to resemble indigenous people Here's an account from participant George Hughes, written in eighteen thirty four, so more than sixty years after this event occurred, quote It was now evening, and I immediately dressed myself in the costume of an Indian, equipped with a small hatchet, which I and my associates denominated the Tomahawk Whitch and a club after having painted my face and hands with coal dust in the shop of a blacksmith I repaired to Griffin's wharf, where the ships lay that contained the tea When I first appeared in the street, after being thus disguised, I fell in with many who were dressed, equipped and painted as I was and who fell in with me and marched in order to the place of our destination There's really no firsthand documentation about why specifically, at least some of the men were in these costumes. And it's also not clear what exactly those costumes entailed Some participants firsth accounts used generic words like Indian or Indian dress, including that of Joshua Wyeth, who wrote the first published account from a participant more than fifty years later One Boston newews report from a couple of days after the event describes the men as dressed as quote Mohawks or Indians, while another references Indians from Naraganset. And still other accounts mention that at least some of the men were not in indigenous dress at all We also don't definitively know why the Mohawk and the Naragganset were the nations that were specifically named in various news reports and other accounts, but these are not the same indigenous nations The Mohawk or the Kunukanaka are one of the six nations of the Hideenishaani. They're an Iroquoan speaking people Their ancestral homeland is in what's now easastern New York State as well as adjacent parts of Canada and Vermont The Narraganset are an algonquian speaking people whose ancestral homeland is in what's now Rhode Island. So these are two different nations from two different language groups whose homelands are hundreds of miles apart Neither of them are among the nations whose homelands are near what's now Boston The reason for adopting this dress also is not clearly documented anywhere But a lot of colonists, particularly colonists who were aligned with groups like the Sons of Liberty, already saw indigenous people as something of a symbol representing ideas like autonomy, freedom, and unity. People had worn so called Indian dress at other protests against British policies prior to the Boston Tea Party In New York, Broadsidees signed The Mohawks had been circulating, warning people against assisting with the landing of ships carrying British tea The destruction of the tea was also a symbolic protest, and dressing as Native Americans or in clothing inspired by indigenous dress, was symbolic of the men's connection to America, not to Britain So this may have been meant as a basic disguise or to try to deflect suspicion away from the colonists. but Indigenous imagery already had these additional layers of meaning And there's obviously also some irony here. Colonists were appropriating indigenous imagery as an emblem of ideals like freedom while also waging war against indigenous nations and violating treaties and generally viewing indigenous peoples as savage and inferior Also the idea that these men were specifically dressed as Mohawk rather than more generically Indian or possibly naraganset, like that doesn't seem to have really solidified until decades later Okay, so to get back to Sarah Bradley Fulton According to Wilde's account, some of the men who participated in the destruction of the tea met and prepared at her brother, Nathaniel Bradley's carpenter shop. Fulton and her sister in law, who is just referred to as Mrs. Bradley in sururviving accounts, were there to help This is also one of the discrepancies between Wilde and Gill Eliza M. Gill's letter says this happened at the home of Bradley's father, not her brother The letter also says that John Fulton and four Bradley brothers, Nathaniel, Josiah, David, and Thomas were all involved passage from the Boston Gobe that reads like a quote from her says that Sarah Bradley Fulton helped her brothers quote make a perfect disguise And some sources describe Fulton as having been the one to come up with the whole idea that the sons of Liberty should dress like indndigenous men It's really not clear who first gave her the credit for doing that, but as we just established, so called Indian dress had already become part of the culture of protest among the colonists especially in the Northeast Doing this already had some layers of symbolic meaning. So even if she was the person who said, and also wear this y'all should do this. Yeah. like that was something people were already doing The accounts we have of Sarah Bradley Fulton's involvement vary a little bit Either she stayed behind to keep the water hot so the men could remove whatever they'd put on their faces when they returned Or she went down to the harbor to watch from a distance and then left before the men did to get everything ready And there's some suggestion that a British soldier or spy stopped by the Bradley home at some point during the evening either while Fulton was there with her sister in law or after the men had come back and removed their costumes Soldier or spy concluded that there was just some laundry or other housework being done and he moved along Wilde's account describes it this way, quote, Nathaniel Bradley's principles were well known, and a spy hoping to find some proof against him, peered in at the kitchen window, but saw these two women moving about so quietly and naturally that he passed on. little dreaming what was really in progress there This is one of the things that like doesn't really make sense though Gills letter and the Boston Globe prorofile mentioned this as well. All three of them seemed to make it sound like this guy came and looked in the window and left unnoticed. How did anyone know they that he had been there This is what the internet would call a plot hole. Regardless of all that, toward the end of the nineteenth century, in the era when Wilde and Gill were writing about Sarah Bradley Fulton The Bradley home at the corner of Tremont and Hollace became known as the Ta partarty House There were even photo postcards of it available for sale, which is what people had to content themselves with after the house was torn down in eighteen ninety eight. We will talk about Sarah Bradley Fulton's life after the Boston Ta partarty after a sponsor break