HISTORICAL WALKING TOURS | BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
  • Freedom Trail Tours
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    • The Boston Massacre per the Pennsylvania Gazette
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  • Revere Bells Index
    • The Stickney Revere Bell Listings of 1976
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    • Revere Bells in Boston >
      • Paul Revere Bell Old South Meeting House
    • California's 2 Paul Revere Bells
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    • Revere Bell Hampton NH
    • First Parish Church of Kennebunk
    • Revere Bells in Maine
    • Revere Bell in Mansfield
    • Revere Bell of Michigan
    • Revere Salem Mass Bell
    • Roxbury First Unitariarn Universalist Church and their Revere Bell
    • Revere & Son Bell, Savannah Georgia
    • Singapore Revere Bell
    • Tuscaloosa Bell >
      • History of the St John and Leavens Patriarchs
      • Samuel St John Jr Estate Genealogy
      • Authenticating the Revere Tuscaloosa Bell
      • Joshua B Leavens Last Will and Testament
      • 20th Century Tuscaloosa bell
    • Revere Bells Lost in Time
    • Revere Bells Washington DC
    • Revere Bell in Wakefield, Mass
    • Revere Bells Woodstock VT
  • Bostonians
    • Edward F Alexander of The Harvard 20th Civil War Regiment
    • Polly Baker
    • John Wilkes Booth
    • The Mad Hatter, Thomas, Boston Corbett who Killed John Wilkes Booth
    • Richard-Henry-Dana-Jr
    • James Franklin
    • Benjamin Harris of Publick Occurrences
    • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
    • William Lloyd Garrison
    • USS Thomas Hudner DDG116
    • Edward Hutchinson Robbins Revere
    • Amos Lincoln
    • King Philip
    • Mayor's of Boston
    • Mum Bett & Theodore Sedgwick
    • James Otis
    • Paul Joseph Revere
    • Reverend Larkin's Horse
    • John Rowe >
      • John Rowe's Diary Entries
      • John Rowe's Dinner Party
      • John Rowe and the Jail Fire
      • Hang John Rowe?????
      • John Rowe the Fisherman
      • Joh Rowe's Tea Ship
    • Be Proud to be Called a Lucy Stoner
    • Rachel Wall , Pirate
    • Paul Revere the Coroner of Boston
    • Deborah Sampson
    • Who was Mrs. Silence Dogood?
    • Dr. Joseph Warren's Dedication
  • History Blog
  • Lilja's of Natick
    • Lilja Brothers Military History
    • Lilja's Family Album
    • Memorials and Tributes to the Five Lilja Brothers
    • Lilja Family Tree
    • Lilja Historical Family Tree Documents
    • Lilja References
  • Collage of Boston
    • 4th of July Parade, Bristol RI
    • Boston Harbor
    • The Customs House
    • Forest Hills Cemetery
    • Georges Island
    • Nonviolent Monument to Peace - Sherborn
    • The Battle Road
    • Skate bike and scooter park
    • Cassin Young & USS Cassin Young
    • MIT
    • Historic Charles River
    • The Roxbury Standpipe on Fort Hill
    • John & Abigail Adams National Park
  • Boston's Racial History - Ante-Bellum

Ebenezer Richardson, The Informer

2/21/2020

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Richardson, born in Woburn, Massachusetts made his living as a customs official for the British Administration at Boston Harbor, Massachusetts.  The local Sons of Liberty considered him a snitch.

He had a privileged position.  Thanks to the Writ of Assistance of 1660 the customs officials in the British Empire had a blanket court order to enter on demand any private or public structure and search for smuggled goods.  Parliament offered incentives to their North American representatives to aggressively do their job. One-third of any cash converted from confiscated goods was the customs officials’ reward.  The magistrate that signed the writ also received one-third and the British government the remaining third.

Richardson was very competent at irritating the local Puritans beyond his money-making endeavors as a customs official.  He married for money. During his marriage, he impregnated his wife’s sister. In denial, he blamed the event on their local minister.  The reverend was driven out of town. Richardson’s wife died. He married her sister and charged his wife’s estate for the maintenance of her children.  

Richardson continued a running battle over the non-importation of British goods with the Sons of Liberty.   This quote sets the scene for Richardson’s most felonious episode.
“The occasion arrived on 22 February 1770, a Thursday, which, like all Thursdays, was by Boston custom a market day and a school holiday; plenty of idle schoolboys as well as numerous up-country farmers stood available to bolster the already powerful Boston mob.”

Richardson worked himself into a frenzy over a non-importation sign planted on his neighbor’s house, Theophilus Lillie. The sign was the handy-craft of the Sons of Liberty and was not the first or last time a merchant’s home would be violated by a mob.  Lillie’s intelligent defense of his business practice is available at Boston 1775, linked here. 

As the evening progressed Richardson attempted to remove the sign using another vendor’s horse and wagon as a battering ram.  He failed. Richardson was now amongst the crowd and clearly more a target than Lillie. 

As verbal abuse was given and taken, Richardson’s windows seemed to attract any and all available stones and oyster shells lying in the road.  Too many adolescents leaned on his fence and gate until it collapsed. Eventually, his wife was hit by a projectile launched by Richardson and returned by the Sons of Liberty.  He had enough. Richardson rushed into his house, not to escape the crowd but to get his blunderbuss on the second floor. He pointed it out the window and fired. Poor Christopher Seider, a German immigrant of a few months, reached down to find a small object and was hit with eleven pellets from Richardson’s gun.  Despite the aid of every Boston doctor, Seider, aged eleven, died a few hours later in his mother’s arms. Christopher Seider’s story is linked here.
​

Richardson was nearly lynched but William Molineaux, perhaps the instigator of this non-importation riot, rushed him to jail with momentum  provided by a raging crowd. He was tried and found guilty of murder in the first degree. The judge delayed sentencing expecting, and months later receiving, a pardon from Parliament.  Richardson rushed off to the customs office in Philadelphia and continued to build on his substantial reputation.

[1] http://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/LJA02d086

                                                               Bibliography
Zobel, Hiller B. The Boston massacre. New York, W.W. Norton, 1970.
http://boston1775.blogspot.com/search/label/Ebenezer%20Richardson
https://www.masshist.org/database/318  The Boston Gazette 3/5/1770
http://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/LJA02d086

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John Adams, 1st of Three Legal Victories; a Murder on the HMS Rose; A Confrontation Running up to the Boston Massacre; Defense of the British Soldiers

10/20/2017

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John Rowe’s Diary Entry April 23, 1769

4/22/2017

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Christopher Seider (Snider) Was Killed 250 Years   Ago on February 22, 1770, By Ebenezer Richardson              Eleven days before the Boston Massacre

2/23/2017

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The Walk-up to the Boston Massacre  John Rowe      Finds Himself in the Middle, 2 Days into the British                                         Occupation

2/7/2017

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Picture
John Rowe's Wharf today.

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       Yankee Doodle Dandy, Not a Patriotic Song

2/4/2017

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        John Hancock’s Admiralty Trials End Feb 1769

1/25/2017

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January 31, 1769, John Rowe’s Diary Entry Mostly About Yesterday’s Fire at the Jail 398 days before the                              Boston Massacre

1/22/2017

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January 10, 1769, Tuesday, The British Army Seems to Have Run Out of Hard Currency 418 Days before the                                 Boston Massacre

1/10/2017

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January 7, 1769, The Admiralty Court Case Against John Hancock Closed the Court Room from the Public. 422 Days before the Boston Massacre

1/7/2017

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  • Freedom Trail Tours
    • In The Footsteps of Paul Revere
    • Freedom Trail Audio Tour
    • The Boston Massacre Tour
    • Boston Civil War Tour
    • The Boston Massacre Lesson Plan
    • Paul Revere's Neighborhood
    • Paul Revere's Row to Charlestown 4/18/1775
    • The Boston Massacre per the Pennsylvania Gazette
    • Paul Revere Lesson Plan
  • Revere Bells Index
    • The Stickney Revere Bell Listings of 1976
    • Paul Revere Bell of Beverly
    • Revere Bells in Boston >
      • Paul Revere Bell Old South Meeting House
    • California's 2 Paul Revere Bells
    • Paul Revere & Son's Bell Westborough Massachusetts
    • Falmouth, Massachusetts
    • Revere Bell Fredericksburg VA
    • Revere Bell Hampton NH
    • First Parish Church of Kennebunk
    • Revere Bells in Maine
    • Revere Bell in Mansfield
    • Revere Bell of Michigan
    • Revere Salem Mass Bell
    • Roxbury First Unitariarn Universalist Church and their Revere Bell
    • Revere & Son Bell, Savannah Georgia
    • Singapore Revere Bell
    • Tuscaloosa Bell >
      • History of the St John and Leavens Patriarchs
      • Samuel St John Jr Estate Genealogy
      • Authenticating the Revere Tuscaloosa Bell
      • Joshua B Leavens Last Will and Testament
      • 20th Century Tuscaloosa bell
    • Revere Bells Lost in Time
    • Revere Bells Washington DC
    • Revere Bell in Wakefield, Mass
    • Revere Bells Woodstock VT
  • Bostonians
    • Edward F Alexander of The Harvard 20th Civil War Regiment
    • Polly Baker
    • John Wilkes Booth
    • The Mad Hatter, Thomas, Boston Corbett who Killed John Wilkes Booth
    • Richard-Henry-Dana-Jr
    • James Franklin
    • Benjamin Harris of Publick Occurrences
    • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
    • William Lloyd Garrison
    • USS Thomas Hudner DDG116
    • Edward Hutchinson Robbins Revere
    • Amos Lincoln
    • King Philip
    • Mayor's of Boston
    • Mum Bett & Theodore Sedgwick
    • James Otis
    • Paul Joseph Revere
    • Reverend Larkin's Horse
    • John Rowe >
      • John Rowe's Diary Entries
      • John Rowe's Dinner Party
      • John Rowe and the Jail Fire
      • Hang John Rowe?????
      • John Rowe the Fisherman
      • Joh Rowe's Tea Ship
    • Be Proud to be Called a Lucy Stoner
    • Rachel Wall , Pirate
    • Paul Revere the Coroner of Boston
    • Deborah Sampson
    • Who was Mrs. Silence Dogood?
    • Dr. Joseph Warren's Dedication
  • History Blog
  • Lilja's of Natick
    • Lilja Brothers Military History
    • Lilja's Family Album
    • Memorials and Tributes to the Five Lilja Brothers
    • Lilja Family Tree
    • Lilja Historical Family Tree Documents
    • Lilja References
  • Collage of Boston
    • 4th of July Parade, Bristol RI
    • Boston Harbor
    • The Customs House
    • Forest Hills Cemetery
    • Georges Island
    • Nonviolent Monument to Peace - Sherborn
    • The Battle Road
    • Skate bike and scooter park
    • Cassin Young & USS Cassin Young
    • MIT
    • Historic Charles River
    • The Roxbury Standpipe on Fort Hill
    • John & Abigail Adams National Park
  • Boston's Racial History - Ante-Bellum