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Illustration courtesy of: theamericanrevolution.org
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Joseph Hawley’s Smugglers Blend Tea
In December
1773, a band of sixty American patriots calling
themselves the Sons of Liberty dressed as Mohawk Indians
and boarded three sailing ships docked in Boston Harbor.
These ships - the Dartmouth, the Eleanor and the Beaver
- were owned by the British East India Company, and had
arrived loaded with cargos of tea for the colonists.
Frustrated and angry over years of taxation imposed upon
them by England for items such as tea, sugar, glass,
paper, coffee and wine, colonists rebelled in 1767 by
boycotting English goods. Colonial merchants supported
this boycott, and began smuggling ‘contraband tea ’ from
Holland, which imposed no tax on the colonists.
The smuggled tea began to cut deeply into the sales of
British tea. In an attempt to empty their warehouses in
England of un-sold tea, the three ships in Boston harbor
had been sent to reclaim the colonial tea market. The
British had devised a scheme to sell this tea at a very
low cost, which would put the colonial smugglers out of
business. But, as the colonists quickly realized, it
would also make them vulnerable once again to‘ taxation
without representation’ from England.
The time had come for the patriots to decry ‘enough ’ to
the British. On December 16th, 1773 a group of over
5,000 townspeople gathered at the Old South Meeting
House to request that the three ships turn around and
return to England. When the Governor of Massachusetts
refused to do this, and demanded that the colonists
accept the shipment of tea, the patriots, led by Samuel
Adams, boarded the ships late that night and seized all
342 chests of tea, dumping them one by one into Boston
Harbor.
This act of rebellion by the colonists, which came to be
known as the Boston Tea Party, released smoldering
feelings of resentment toward England. Pressing for
independence and self-rule, the colonists stood their
ground and fought for their freedom against England in
the Revolutionary War of 1775.
As a new nation was about to be born from these troubled
times, Major Joseph Hawley, of Pudding Lane,
Northampton, was heavily involved in hatching plans with
Samuel Adams and John Hancock for the impending
rebellion against England. Joseph Hawley was a noted
lawyer, town clerk, selectman and representative to the
General Court in Boston. As a staunch radical and
firebrand in the cause for independence, Hawley often
led the Town Meetings in Boston. It is documented that
in 1768 he brought home to Northampton two pounds of
smuggled tea: one pound for his family and one for his
cousin.
To salute the efforts of Joseph Hawley in the fight for
freedom we have created this special blend of tea. In
formulating this tea, our goal was to replicate as best
as possible the style and flavor of the tea that was
being smuggled from Holland. We have researched existent
historic documents of the Smith and Van Berchem Tea
Company formerly of Amsterdam, one of several Dutch tea
companies in operation during this period. From these
documents, we gleaned insight into the teas they were
importing from China at that time.
With the rebuke of the English traders by the colonists
following the Boston Tea Party, Dutch traders were able
to capture tea sales in New England. Despite the fact
that the Boston Tea Party was the pivotal point that
turned many colonists into staunch coffee drinkers, tea
remained popular.
Our tea blend is an historically correct rendition of
the dark, leafy tea blends that the Chinese sent to the
west from Canton during this time, and the tea that
Joseph Hawley exercised his independence to buy and
smuggle back to Northampton.
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