The Boston Tea Party

New World, New Freedoms

Almost two hundred years before the Boston Tea Party, Europeans were exploring and claiming parts of the New World. Once forests were cleared, Europeans could grow corn, beans, and other crops in North America’s rich land. So, Europeans began to settle there in the 1500s.

Life in the New World wasn’t easy. Many settlers died from disease or starvation during the dangerous trip across the ocean. Many got sick with yellow fever and malaria. When Europeans tried to claim land that Native Americans were already living on for thousands of years, they found the Native Americans wouldn’t give up land without a fight.

But by the start of the 1600s, enough Europeans were living in the New World that they began to set up colonies, and the Europeans became known as colonists. The first British colony was set up in Jamestown, Virginia on May 14, 1607. The colonists there struggled to grow food and find clean drinking water. And mosquitoes and other insects carried diseases. Out of the one hundred colonists who settled there, eighty became ill and died within the first three years. But after those initial struggles, the colony began to thrive and grow. They planted tobacco, and they made money by selling the leaves back to English companies.

In 1620, another group of English settlers landed on Plymouth Rock, forming the Plymouth Colony. These settlers became known as Pilgrims. They arrived on the Mayflower. Many people thought young girls weren’t strong enough to make the journey across the ocean, but the Mayflower sailed with eleven girls. The oldest girl, Priscilla Mullins, traveled with her father, mother, and brother when she was seventeen years old. But she was the only one in her family to survive the first brutal Massachusetts winter.

In 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded by about four hundred settlers. By 1640, as many as twenty thousand settlers had arrived from England. Many of them left England because the official religion, the Church of England, was against their particular form of Christianity.

While religious freedom was one reason people traveled to the colonies, the colonies also provided an easier way for people to have a say in government. Any white male landowner could vote, and that wasn’t the case in England. In addition, the New World provided new ways to earn money because the land was rich in natural resources. There were trees for fuel and lumber, and animals for food and fur. Settlers would build mills for sawing lumber and grinding wheat and corn. Others would pull cod, lobsters, whales, and more from the Atlantic Ocean.

Despite all of this, life was still hard. There were outbreaks of smallpox, which was often fatal for the settlers. And food could be hard to grow in the rocky soil of some parts of the New World. The Great Boston Fire of 1760 destroyed nearly 350 buildings and left more than a thousand homeless. Still, the British colonies continued to grow.

November 28, 1773

Today, Felicity and her father arrive in Boston Harbor. The Dove docks at Griffin’s Wharf next to another ship, Dartmouth, which came all the way from England. Felicity watches a group of stern men line up on the wharf blocking Dartmouth’s crew from unloading cargo. A man on the wharf calls out, “We don’t want your tea!”

Uncle George hurries Felicity and Father away from the wharf. When Father asks what’s going on, Uncle George responds that the colonists have demanded that Dartmouth return to England. The colonists don’t want to buy or sell the tea and pay the taxes on it. But Thomas Hutchinson, the “King’s man,” has refused the colonists’ demand.

As they walk through the streets, Felicity notices two British soldiers in red coats. Uncle George explains the King has sent soldiers to police the colonists, and nobody’s happy about that.

Aunt Charlotte welcomes them inside her home with a cup of tea. But it’s not real tea. Aunt Charlotte explains she brewed it from herbs she grew in the garden. No tea from England is drunk in her house.

Felicity sees the Boston Merrimans are Patriots. Sympathy for the Patriot cause begins to grow in Felicity’s heart.