Perhaps my passion for liberty can be traced back to two prominent characters in American history that I presume were my distant relatives.
I was born on December 16, 1946 on the 173rd Anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. One of the most prominent planners and participants was Benjamin Edes, who was the Editor of the Boston Gazette. I have no definitive proof, but I have reason to believe that my Great Great Grandmother Susan Edes was Benjamin's Great Grand daughter.
Benjamin Edes, (born October 14, 1732, Charlestown, Massachusetts—died December 11, 1803, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.), founder and co-owner with John Gill of the New England newspaper the Boston Gazette and Country Journal. As editor and publisher of the Gazette, Edes made the paper a leading voice favoring American independence.
Edes was 23 and had received only a modest education when he joined with Gill, a young Boston printer, to found the Gazette as a patriots’ voice in 1755. It was an immediate success. It is said that the rebellious colonists who took part in the Boston Tea Party (1773) assembled at Edes’s home and then donned their Indian costumes and paint at the Gazette’s office.
From mid-1774 to April 1775, Edes circulated some 2,000 copies of the Gazette each week—more copies than any other colonial paper. British authorities offered a bounty for his arrest, intending to execute him for Gazette stories about alleged British atrocities. To avoid arrest Edes moved his press out of Boston in April 1775, resuming publication later in Watertown.
As British-colonial relations worsened, Edes began to carry articles by such famous proponents of independence as Samuel Adams, John Adams, and John Hancock. Edes thus played an important role in the Revolutionary War by fostering the increasingly independent American identity and anti-colonial sentiment. His newspaper, which lost popularity after the war, ceased publication in 1798. Edes died in poverty.
At age 13, boys like Bartholomew Broaders began apprenticeships. Leaving their parents homes to live and study under a master of a craft. Being teenagers, apprentices often got into a lot of mischief. Bartholomew Broaders and his friends were doing just that on the night of March 5th, but in the volatile town where they lived, youthful mischief often turned into a violent altercation which sometimes ended in bloodshed.
For more information on Bartholomew Broaders, try:
- A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston hosted by the Massachusetts Historical Society- This is a published account from the 1700s that includes Bartholomew’s account of that night.
- Bartholomew Broaders and Google Books from the blog Boston 1775- In this article, the author discovers what happened to the young apprentice after traumatic events of the Boston Massacre.
Replies
If you have prominent people in your family free, please share the information with the members of the Constitution Club.. If you are related to Alexander Hamilton I offer my condolences.