Revolutionary War, Boston Tea Party Members Continue Being Honored

By Bernie Marvin

The Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum 250 organization in Boston, Massachusetts, celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 2023. Before then, the group had been saluting people across the country who were the roughhouse participants who snuck onto the wharves along Boston Harbor and dumped a load of British tea into the sea.

That early act was one of several that rocked the boat and sent England and the newly gathered American colonies to war against each other two years later, on April 19, 1775. As participants' names were uncovered, the Boston group charged with honoring these brave souls has continued its work of visiting their burial sites and placing historic plaques.

North Haverhill Revolutionary War Soldier and Boston Tea Party member Ebenezer Mackintosh was honored locally in 2022, when the celebrated Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum staff traveled to the Horse Meadow Cemetery and held an impressive ceremony there to honor the courageous act of Mackintosh, who lived and died in North Haverhill, a short distance from the cemetery.

Just last week, personnel from the historic Boston group traveled to Center Conway, New Hampshire, to celebrate the involvement in the Boston Tea Party of Revolutionary War patriot Samuel Howard, the third known Granite State resident to have been a part of the Boston Tea Party activities.

Four Vermont Boston Tea Party participants have all been acknowledged and honored in the Green Mountain State.

The Boston ceremonial group has been traveling the United States honoring Tea Party members since 2018. It has not been an easy task, as the group of about 268 men hacked open and then tossed 342 bales of British tea into the harbor.

The group had signed a pact never to reveal the names of the participants, so it was not easy to find the ones who actually went down to the wharves that night, snuck aboard the ships, and did their evil deed.

That act was one of the final straws that broke the camel's back, prompting King George to increase the pace of punishments against the patriots.

Ebenezer Mackintosh was born in 1737 and died in 1816. He is buried in the Horse Meadow Cemetery in North Haverhill. The Boston Tea Party group placed a commemorative marker on his grave site on Saturday, July 16, 2022.

The ceremony included the Boston Tea Party group, local Haverhill officials, members of the Oxbow chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and interested residents.

The ceremony will include reading a passage on patriot MacIntosh's participation in the tea party from a Haverhill history book. The project began in 2018 as the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum worked with the City of Boston and the historic burial grounds to place commemorative markers on the graves of Boston Tea Party participants in the Burying Grounds along Boston's Freedom Trail.

The project has continued to grow and develop as the 250th Anniversary got closer. Since 2018, several communities have placed markers in several municipalities in the public interest as this Revolutionary War story continues to grow at the local and national level.

The commemorative markers are brass and six inches in diameter. Each marker is attached to a metal stake and features a cast relief inspired by Nathaniel Currier's 1846 "The Destruction of the Tea at Boston Harbor", a lithograph that is well-known and often used to represent the Boston Tea Party event.

While researching this project, I found that the life of Ebenezer Mackintosh and his family was chronicled in writings from the March 24, 1924, meeting of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.

It traces his family from Scotland to their final destination in North Haverhill, after a walking trip from Boston, where he lived most of his life up until that time. He died in 1816 and is buried in the historic Horse Meadow Cemetery.

Recently, I was unable to find Ebenezer Mackintosh's gravesite in the layout of Horse Meadow Cemetery, but I found only the grave of Philip McIntosh, perhaps a relative.

Further checking historical references for the Mackintosh family in North Haverhill, I found that Ebenezer was buried, but the wrong name was assigned to his final location. He died in 1816 and was mistakenly buried with the wrong name on his headstone. That erroneous name, Philip McIntosh, remains, but the official record has been corrected.

Also, there are four confirmed Boston Tea Party participants buried in Vermont. The Boston Tea Party Museum has also held official ceremonies at those four sites and affixed a plaque to each grave.

Tea Party participant Anthony Morse is buried in Sharon; Samuel Hammond is buried in Wardsboro; Adam Beals, Jr. is buried in St. Albans; and William Cox is buried in Fairlee.