WESTFORD — The defiant group of colonists who participated in the Boston Tea Party nearly 250 years ago swore an oath of secrecy to never reveal the names of those involved in what is today considered among the country’s most historic political protests.
“While some held true to those oaths even until their death, it’s clear others did not, and I think the very fact that we’re all standing here today is testament to that,” Evan O’Brien, of the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, told a crowd gathered at the Fairview Cemetery in Westford on Saturday afternoon.
O’Brien spoke these words while standing next to the aged headstone of Joseph Read, which rests in the cemetery, in the shadow of a maple tree. The crowd gathered there to celebrate Read, who was recently identified as among the elusive participants of the Boston Tea Party.
Born on June 4, 1716, Read would become a husband, a father of eight children, a Westford selectman, a town clerk and a representative of the General Court. As Westford Museum Director Linda Greene said during Saturday’s ceremony, he was a “prominent man in Westford for over 20 years.”
But what brought the people to his gravesite on Saturday was Read’s actions on the evening of Dec. 13, 1763.
“It is recorded in his family history that he took part in the famous ‘destruction of the tea,’ today known as the Boston Tea Party,” Greene said, “an act of protest regarded by many as the spark that ignited the American Revolution.”
Read, at the age of 57, was among those who boarded the three merchant ships and dumped the roughly 340 chests of British East India Company tea into the icy waters of the Boston Harbor in protest of the British crown.
O’Brien pointed out there’s an “air of mystery and secrecy” surrounding the destruction of the tea, considered an act of treason by the British authority. This has caused the names of the brave participants to remain hidden in the shadows of history.
“But Capt. Joseph Read, and others like him, are just as important to our history as the names we’re all so familiar with,” O’Brien said. “The Paul Reveres, the John Hancocks, the John Adams. They were great individuals, but so was Capt. Joseph Read.”
With this in mind, members of the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum and Revolution 250 — a consortium of organizations working together to commemorate the 250th anniversaries of the events that led to the American Revolution — worked to track down Boston Tea Party participants and to place commemorative plaques at their gravesites.
During Saturday’s ceremony, Read’s gravesite was decorated with the Boston Tea Party plaque. His is the 118th plaque that has been placed at a gravesite of a known participant since the project began in 2019. O’Brien pointed out the plan to place the markers at the graves of all 125 known Boston Tea Party participants throughout the U.S. leading up to the protest’s 250th anniversary on Dec. 16, 2023.
“John Adams would call the Boston Tea Party ‘the most magnificent movement of all,’” O’Brien said. “Its principles and values still speak to the generations, and ideas of protesting against injustice and tyranny are things that we can all still relate even just shy of 250 years later.”
The image depicted on the commemorative marker is inspired by Nathaniel Currier’s lithograph, “The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor,” created in 1846.
After the Boston Tea Party, Read would experience the nation’s independence from Britain, while living another approximately two decades before dying in 1795 at the age of 79.
Attending Saturday’s ceremony were Jean Paradis, of Melrose, along with her siblings, Robert Hannaford, of Worcester, and Leslie Prescott, of Brockton, who, as Paradis pointed out, share four out of Read’s eight great-grandparents.
Paradis made the discovery while exploring her family’s ancestry, an activity she describes as a “fascinating journey.”
According to Paradis, though she is doubtful that any of her direct ancestors were involved in the Boston Tea Party, she has discovered up to approximately 30 ancestors in her family lineage who participated in the Revolutionary War.
“It’s an honor to be connected to the revolutionary patriots in any way,” Paradis said.
Follow Aaron Curtis on Twitter @aselahcurtis
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