In 1987, the descendants of Boston-area blacksmith Thomas Wells donated a label belonging to a chest of Chinese tea recovered from the Boston Tea Party to the Old South Meeting House. It’s a museum today, but back in 1773, that’s where the Boston Tea Party was planned. The problem, as researchers have just discovered, is that the label was probably created somewhere between the 1860s and 1870s, about 100 years after the historic event.
MIT historian Tristan Brown initially assumed the label was genuine. Then he translated the Chinese script on the label.
It’s not like he was the first to do this. Previous researchers have translated its writing, but they translated it in Mandarin. Brown is a historian of China and, as such, realized that part of the writing made more sense in Cantonese, the language that dominated Chinese commercial shipping networks.
Suddenly, the label made a lot more sense. It revealed an American name, “Smith, Archer,” as it identified Smith, Archer and Co., a New York trading firm active in East Asia during the 1860s and 1870s.
A Supposed Relic From the Boston Tea Party Just Got a Very Different Origin Story
And thus, the idea that this label belonged to a chest of tea tossed into the harbor during the Boston Tea Party died. But that doesn’t mean the label doesn’t have a little bit of fascinating history of its own. Brown says the label likely made it to the Wells family through John Milton Wells, a relative who went west during the gold rush and later sold imported Asian teeth in Michigan.
Somewhere along the way, as it traveled through the tangled web of history, the label became associated with a foundational moment in American history and eventually became a museum piece.
The myth grew larger and larger during the 19th century, an era when America became obsessed with its own revolutionary past. Family stories, museum displays, and newspaper articles passed it on. At some point, what might’ve started as an understanding became historical fact.
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