With the 250th anniversary (the Sestercentennial) of the Boston Tea Party coming up on December 16th, I thought I’d celebrate it by sharing the story of the Wellfleet connection to the event. This is not about South Wellfleet history. Stories about this event have recently appeared in the Provincetown Independent and the Journal of the Cape Cod Genealogical Society.
It’s only recently that I learned the tale of John Greenough and the tea that he rescued from a shipwreck off Peaked Hills Bars. In early December 1773, the brig William was on its way to Boston with the other three tea ships but got caught in a storm and went ashore. The 19th Century Cape Cod historians mention Mr. Greenough but seem to frame his venture as that of a naïve schoolmaster who thought he’d make a little money with his “side hustle” but got in trouble with his neighbors over selling the tea which had become a symbol of America’s growing fight over unfair taxation. Recent research presented a far more complicated series of events on the outer Cape.
Contemporary historians have researched the sinking of the brig William and Greenough’s role in the aftermath of the wreck in much more detail. Mary Beth Norton, a historian at Cornell University, wrote an article (and later, a book) on the topic that I recently discovered. Professor Norton relied upon the work of other historians, newspaper accounts, and the Greenough papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Using newspaper databases, I read contemporary accounts of the growing ill will about the British Parliament’s tax policy. Considering his actions, one wonders if Mr. Greenough was aware of the sense of his fellow citizens. Did he have access to the Boston papers?
Before we get to the story of the shipwreck, Norton makes sure we understand how important the tea was to Americans. She described it as having an addictive quality. It was not only popular, it was part of the culture, as upper-class women took pride in their tea service and socializing over tea parties. The best tea was shipped from China by the East India Tea Company (EIC), a monopoly established by the British government, and the tea that was taxed. However, there was an active market for smuggled tea, commonly called Dutch tea.
In 1767 the Townshend Duties were enacted by Parliament. These custom duties on tea and other commodities caused the Americans to boycott products, so Parliament retreated somewhat in 1770 but kept the duty on tea. Philadelphia and New York kept up their active boycott of EIC tea, but Boston had returned to drinking it and paying the duty. However, in May of 1773, in an effort to rescue the EIC from financial disaster, Parliament imposed an additional tax on the tea. Americans interpreted this act as Parliament’s seeking to establish its authority over the British colonies. In the fall of 1773, seven ships were launched from England with tea shipments: one each for Charleston, Philadelphia and New York, and four to Boston.
John Greenough of Wellfleet was the son of Thomas and Martha Greenough of Boston. Born in 1742, he was educated at Yale and also received a Masters degree from Harvard in 1763. He married Mehitable Dillingham of Harwich in 1766 and settled in Wellfleet in 1768 when he was hired as the schoolmaster of the grammar school. In Massachusetts, grammar schools taught Greek and Latin, to prepare students for college and careers in the ministry, the law, and medicine. Greenough also became a Wellfleet merchant and, in 1771, a Justice of the Peace.
The trouble that erupted in the Boston Tea Party started in November 1773. Historian J.L. Bell who writes a daily post on his “Boston 1775” site, covered the November events recently. There were five merchants in Boston who were the consignees for the EIC tea. Knowing that the EIC tea was coming their way, the Boston Sons of Liberty made an attempt to get them to refuse the tea shipment which is what had happened with the shipments in Charleston and Philadelphia. The New York City shipment got caught up in a storm, hunkered down in the Caribbean, and did not arrive until the spring of 1774, but it was also refused.
Richard Clarke was one of the Boston consignees and owned the William. Like the other tea consignees, he had not responded to the request to refuse the tea in early November. A mob of some 100 men had shown up at his warehouse in Boston. The crowd was menacing but a few of Clarke’s friends intervened and convinced the crowd to back down. However, for protection from the mob, Clarke and his family moved over to Castle William, the island in Boston Harbor under the control of the British military. The situation in Boston culminated on December 16th when what would become known as “the Boston Tea Party” occurred at Griffins’ Wharf as the tea cargo on three ships was destroyed by a large group of men dressed as Indians.
It was in this atmosphere of unease, menace, and dissension that John Greenough went to Provincetown to investigate the wreck of the William on December 13, 1773. He first took an official statement from the ship’s captain, Joseph Loring, about the details of how the ship had run aground. Then he hired local men in Provincetown, and together with the crew of the William, they removed the cargo from the wreck onto the beach. Besides the EIC tea, the cargo included a shipment of street lamps for Boston and some miscellaneous items, medicines, and pepper.
Eventually, they had to get the cargo from the beach over the dune and onto wagons to move it into Provincetown. It must have been hard work: a crate of tea weighed 350 pounds, and there were 58, including four crates that were damaged. By the time they got the wreck unloaded, one of the Clarke sons, Jonathan, a personal friend of Greenough’s, had traveled overland to Provincetown. After the cargo was unloaded, the wreck was burned in order to salvage the iron fittings. This occurred on December 18th.
Greenough had to undertake several additional chores regarding the cargo. First, he had to get it to Boston. He easily found a ship to take the streetlamps and other items. (The lamps were installed in the spring of 1774.) But no captain on the outer Cape would touch the tea. While the tea was in storage in Provincetown, Samuel Adams accused “the Mashpee Tribe” of “being sick at the knees” for not destroying it. Luckily for Greenough, a ship from Salem, the Eunice, had taken shelter in Provincetown harbor, and the captain, Mr. Cook, agreed to take it to Boston. By the time this arrangement was made, the destruction of the tea on the other ships had taken place, and the tea from the Cape was put into storage at Castle William in early January 1774. Later, Captain Cook was brought before the town meeting in Salem to explain his action but he was able to plead “ignorance” and was not punished. The owner of the Eunice, Mr. Bickford, was also threatened by a mob “dressed in an Indian manner” but fortunately he was ensconced in the Salem smallpox hospital having his inoculation followed by quarantine, and could not be found.
With Clarke’s permission, Greenough had divided one of the damaged chests of tea and used it to pay the Provincetown workers for their labor. When word got out about this payment, several laborers’ homes were broken into and searched by men dressed as Indians and the tea was destroyed. In another incident, a Wellfleet man who purchased some tea from Atwood was accosted “in the Wellfleet woods” by three men in disguise.
Greenough was also given two chests of the EIC tea to sell as an agent of the Clarke firm. Before he left Provincetown, he sold a portion of it to Stephen Atwood. In January 1774, Atwood’s home was also broken into, and the tea burned. In the Spring, 100 pounds of tea showed up with a peddler from Martha’s Vineyard in Lyme, Connecticut. Based on the amount, it was thought to be some of the Atwood tea. That tea was burned also.
Greenough had gone over to Boston with one of the ships moving the cargo and reported later that he had consulted with “Boston gentlemen” about keeping the untaxed tea and selling it. He indicated that the gentlemen were in agreement with his view. But Greenough’s brother, and then his father, who happened to be on Boston’s Committee of Correspondence, both sent angry letters to him when they heard of his plan, telling him to stay away from the “cursed tea.” In a letter to his father, Greenough asserted that “the actions of your Indians were more dangerous than any Act of the British Parliament.”
In Wellfleet, a special committee was assembled to deal with the issue. Greenough was taken aback by his neighbors’ outcry about the tea. Asserting his privileged position, he accused Wellfleet men with private “pique” against him of manipulating the news of the events in Boston on December 16th so that it encouraged the rage of the people of Wellfleet. He got very defensive and even insulting to his Wellfleet neighbors. He was, he said, guided by rational principles, that it was the tax, not the tea that was the issue and that those who opposed his plan to sell it” knew nothing of the dispute with the Mother County.”
At a meeting in January 1774, the Wellfleet Committee rejected his argument and that’s when he agreed to put the remaining tea in their care until they got a response from an inquiry they sent to Boston, asking “gentlemen” there for advice about selling the untaxed Greenough tea. The Wellfleet men seemed to be concerned about how the sale of the tea might affect their other business dealings in Boston, perhaps giving the town a bad name. They did not get a response for two months.
Meanwhile, the town of Eastham was also having problems with the tea. Before relinquishing his supply, Greenough had sold another portion to Colonel Willard Knowles, a leading citizen and the man in charge of the Eastham militia and its arms in storage. At the January 1774 Eastham town meeting the selectmen accepted Knowles’s possession of the tea, and indicated that he could sell it. But in February 1774, another meeting was called, including a group of dissidents who insisted that Knowles should be stripped of his duties regarding the militia and its store of weapons because he could not be trusted. Since there were people at this meeting who did not have the right to vote, others considered it illegal.
In early March, a group of “barbarians with blackened faces” accosted one of the Eastham Selectmen and threatened to tar and feather him. They were talked out of their plan because he argued successfully that he would die from such action. The threat of another attack by the “Eastham Sons of Liberty” caused the Selectmen to assemble quite a large crowd of local militia and their officers to defend Knowles, and the Sons of Liberty backed off. At a meeting later in March, Knowles got the town’s official approval for selling the untaxed tea.
Back in Wellfleet, the special Wellfleet Committee heard from their Boston gentlemen in April about the Greenough affair but got an unsatisfactory answer telling them they just needed to “use their own good sense” about what to do about the tea. There also appeared to be no memory of having given Greenough approval of the tea sale, as he had claimed. At an initial meeting in Wellfleet, set up by Winslow Lewis, Greenough was still defensive and difficult, but at a more conciliatory meeting with Vaaman Holbrook, the situation seemed to smooth out, and the Wellfleet men returned the tea and Greenough sold it. At the same time, Greenough made his apology for having caused such disruption to the town.
As 1774 unfolded, other events moved to center stage. Parliament adopted the Boston Port Act. As of June 1, the Boston port would be closed except to local food and fuel traffic until the EIC had been compensated for the destroyed tea. Three other Acts limited the Massachusetts government, by taking control of town meetings, making British officials immune to prosecution, and requiring colonists to house and quarter British troops on demand.
Late in the year, John Greenough made a formal apology to the Town of Wellfleet, saying he was “heartily sorry” for bringing tea into the district and that he “had never intended to injure the liberties of my country.” At this point, Greenough was also recognizing the authority of the Wellfleet Committee, now under the aegis of the Continental Association, created by the First Continental Congress. Greenough became the Wellfleet Town Clerk and by 1777 was representing the town in the Massachusetts legislature. In 1778, his expertise was used to oversee the removal and dispersal of the contents of the British Man-of-War Somerset when it wrecked in just about the same spot as the William. Later, in 1784, John’s brother David Stoddard Greenough, married Anne Doane, the widow of Wellfleet’s Elisha Doane. The house they lived in in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, is still standing and operated as a museum and cultural center by the Jamaica Plain Tuesday Club. And the tea from the wrecked William? It’s assumed that the British at Castle William enjoyed it during their time in Boston, and whatever was left was blown up as the British withdrew from Boston in March 1776.
The historians who write about John Greenough and the local reactions to the EIC tea use this story as an example of the wide range of opinions that existed in the American colonies before the outbreak of the Revolution as citizens shifted their views as to the right actions to take as the nation evolved.
Sources
Bell, J. L. www. boston1775.blogspot.com
Freeman, Frederick The History of Cape Cod Boston, 1862
Norton, Mary Beth “The Seventh Tea Ship” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol 73, No 4 (October 2016) pp. 681-710.
Norton, Mary Beth 1774: The Long Year of Revolution, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2020
South Wellfleet, Massachusetts 