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 Greenwich Tea Party - New Jersey Posted by:  NJBiblio
N 39° 23.332 W 075° 20.291
18S E 470877 N 4359985
Monument commemorating the December 22, 1774 Tea Party in Greenwich, NJ.
Waymark Code: WM956T
Location: New Jersey, United States
Date Posted: 06/30/2010
Views: 8
In December 1774 the brig Greyhound unexpectedly put in at Greenwich with a cargo of tea owned by the East India Company. It was consigned to Philadelphia, but the skipper decided that the Greenwich cellar of Tory Van Bowen would be a safer storehouse. Local Whigs, angered by the arrival of the tea, met in Bridgeton to discuss action. Before any decision was reached, a group of younger men rounded up a band of 40 from Bridgeton, Fairfield, Shiloh, and Roadstown. Disguised as Indians, they marched on Greenwich, broke into the cellar and carried the chests to a bonfire on the square. The crackling flames and fragrant smoke aroused the whole town. Patriot exultation was not unmixed with regret at the loss of millions of good drinks ; indeed, one of the tea burners, named Stacks, could not help stuffing handfuls of leaves into his close-fitting breeches. Before long his added bulk was noticed, and from then on to the end of his life he was known as "Tea" Stacks. Tory sympathizers complained bitterly about the tea burning, and the English shippers finally started a court action against half a dozen of the young Whigs. The early local historian, Johnson, relates that Chief Justice Frederick Smyth twice charged a grand jury on the tea burning, but each time the jurors reported no bills "for this plain reason – they were Whigs." On the SITE OF THE TEA PARTY in the market square the State erected a monument in 1908. Names of 23 of the tea burners are inscribed on the stone shaft. -- NEW JERSEY
A Guide To Its Present And Past, 1939 (TOUR 29B)
Monument reads:
"In honor of the patriots of Cumberland Co. NJ who on the evening of December 22, 1774 burned British Tea near this site."
Taking a cue from fellow patriots in Boston, this less famous tea party had the same effect in Southern NJ. 4 patriots dressed as Indians boarded a ship in the nearby Cohansey River and burned the load of British tea slated for delivery to Philadelphia. The monument is now about a quarter mile inland from the river, and lists the names of the patriots on the sides.
Book: New Jersey
Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 645
Year Originally Published: 1939
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