This is an article that was in the newspapers, the Patriot press in the 18th century. I tend to find these normally by looking through newspapers, which are generally on microfilm or in special collections. This one, however, I found in a specific collection, which is called the American Archives, edited by Peter Force. And what Peter Force did, in the early 19th century, was go and collect records from newspapers, from state papers, committee papers, and gather them together in several volumes and publish them as part of forming a documentary history of the American Revolution. So, this is a report that appeared in the colonial press. I'm not sure exactly where, but my guess is Boston or Hartford. Possibly more than one press because they tended to copy reports from each other. That's how they got their news, from other newspapers. And it's a report from Providence, RI.

The reason I'm interested in this sort of document is that I'm trying to get a kind of "close to the ground" look at the American Revolution. I want to know what the Patriot movement was like. The movement from, say, 1765 through the Revolution of people protesting parliamentary taxation and legislation. And I want to know less about the leading men who met in conventions and congresses, and who petitioned the King. I know a fair amount about them. I want to know about people on the local ground, ordinary people, women as well as men, and I want to know what was it like for them to become Patriots. And the questions I would bring to looking at these reports and newspapers would include: What is this telling me about ordinary people's participation? Not just what ideas might they bring to joining the revolution, or becoming a Patriot. But also what practices, what things did they have to do to be a Patriot? How do you practice being a Patriot? What does it really mean to join this movement? And what's it like, again, not in the official bodies that we think of as Patriot leaders, but kind of on the local ground, in this case in Providence, RI.

The first thing I was struck by was actually the last sentence, this image of this "Son of Liberty" going around the shops with his lampblack, which is the soot from oil lamps, a kind of black carbon soot. And unpainting the word "tea." It certainly makes me think of more famous events, like the Boston Tea Party. Although that's a real destruction of other people's property, they throw tea that doesn't belong to them into the harbor in Boston. But this seems sort of a smaller offering of one's own tea. But nonetheless, something of a gathering, a really dramatic gathering, where Patriots are expressing their political views.

Elsewhere in the second paragraph it says a great number of inhabitants—you'd really like to know, how many, how many that is compared to all of the inhabitants of Providence. They mention specifically some worthy women. So we know in this case the word "inhabitants" includes women, which sometimes it might or sometimes it doesn't. It doesn't specifically mention anyone else. We get the impression though that this is not limited to people who were qualified to vote. Certainly if women are there, it's not limited to qualified town voters. And possibly therefore there were men and boys present—apprentices, servants, slaves, sailors, any number of people who would normally not be voting and acting politically in that way, even in a town meeting. But who could attend a marketplace to purchase things, or in this case to refuse to purchase or to give up things or to observe.

One thing that I think is intriguing too is there's an argument about tea in this. It's not just a description saying people came to burn their tea. It describes tea for you. That it's needless, we don't need it. It's been detrimental to our liberty and interest and health. And that's intriguing because you can see the logic by which it's detrimental to Patriots' liberty and interest. They don't want to pay taxes on it. They don't think Parliament should be taxing this. Health is another question, and it's interesting that the Patriots raised this issue of how its supposed to be unhealthy just when Britain puts a tax on it, that's not really a common thought in the 18th century—that tea is unhealthy. In fact, people take it in part for medicinal purposes.

There's other information here that you can begin to pick up. That in addition to throwing the tea in the fire, they throw in some newspapers and a printed copy of a speech by Lord North that they disapprove of. And you can go and track down what was Lord North probably speaking about. Rivington's paper, a New York paper, Rivington's a Loyalist, and he's arguing on behalf of parliamentary power. So it's interesting they throw those newspapers in the fire as well. So it's not merely getting rid of the tea. It's all that English stuff.

I think one thing to notice about it is this isn't the kind of newspaper report we would expect, that we would get, of this happening. Even though it's written in the third person by someone describing it as if he or she was there, very authoritative, "this happened." It offers opinions in places where we might expect that you'd interview someone. It doesn't interview Jane Doe and have her say, "Well, I'm really cheerful to be throwing my tea in the fire, because I don't need this noxious weed." It's the reporter telling you and the reporter using language which testifies to his, and I think we can probably use the male pronoun here, position. In reading these it's tricky you will sometimes read pieces like this which talk about true friends of the country and lovers of freedom. And you'll discover the writer is talking about the Loyalists, the Tories, because, of course, they think too that they're the true lovers of America and freedom. So you have to sometimes read for a while to figure that out. In this case it's pretty straight forward, since they're burning Tory newspapers and throwing away tea and supporting the Sons of Liberty.

I'd really like to know more. What happened in organizing this? How did this come about? Who planned it and what was it like to attend and to observe? For example, all right, at noon you hear that you were invited to testify your good disposition to the Patriot cause by bringing your tea. Well, what does it mean if you don't feel like doing it? Does that mean if I don't bring my tea, my neighbors will, from here on out, know that I don't have a good disposition towards the Patriot cause. Does that label me a Tory who is sympathetic to Britain or to parliamentary power?

Similarly, this point that there appeared great cheerfulness in destroying the tea. And that these worthy women made free will offerings of their stocks of the tea. Well, that's a nice description, but you do wonder about those women who maybe didn't want to burn their tea. None of that is covered. If there are women who said, "Not me, I'm keeping my tea," you don't find that out here.

And finally, I think the real clue to the question of coercion or not comes in the last sentence describing a spirited "Son of Liberty" going along the street with his brush and lampblack and unpainting the word "tea" on the shop signs. Well, one wonders what the merchants, whose shops those were, where presumably they sold tea, thought about that. And it strikes me, that we don't have any information here, did he get permission from these merchants ahead of time? Or was this an act that put the merchants in a position where they would have to become quite unpopular with the Patriots if they decided to continue selling tea?

One of the first things I'd do is keep by me a dictionary so I could look up words, particularly a dictionary like the Oxford English Dictionary that has 18th-century meanings. Because often there's a word that will have changed in meaning. One example, they use the term, "the true interest of America." The term "interesting" which people in the 18th century would use to describe a situation, they say "that's an interesting situation." It doesn't mean, "I'm kind of interested in it intellectually," it means it involves people's economic interest, okay. They mean "interest" exactly in that sense almost all the time. And there are other examples, so one thing would be, don't be too far away from a good dictionary and preferably one that can tell you how things were used in the 18th century.

I'd certainly look for any references to people or events and make sure I knew what those were. Look in the history book, see if I could find out who's being referred to, who they assume everyone knows about. I'd go real carefully through the sentences, because 18th-century language, often the sentences are very long, with lots of different clauses which is complicated for us to understand today. And, certainly with newspapers at this time period, where they are either Patriot or Tory newspapers, I'd be looking for the point of view of the writer. In this case, the point of view is someone who's in favor the Patriots. So, that gives us the last thing which is I'd look for what isn't here. And in the case of a Patriot point of view, well, we don't hear about anybody in Providence who disagreed with this. And there, we don't know if there was or was not someone. That's simply absent from this.

One is I would try to contextualize the immediate incident that's being described here, this particular event in Providence, RI. And, the way that I might do that is by looking at other events taking place in Providence, by supporting this document with other descriptions of the event. I would hope I could find in letters or diaries, a description of this tea burning that took place in the marketplace. And I might particularly hope I could find a Tory, or a Loyalist, point of view, somebody who was upset that this happened. And I'd go and look in diaries and letters around the time of March 2nd, and following, look for that.

The second is, after looking at that particular incident, look more broadly at other places where this took place. And it turns out if you just follow in the newspapers, and read diaries and letters from the time, tea burnings are not uncommon in 1775. A variety of them take place in New Hampshire and New Haven, certainly in the New England area, and on into the middle colonies, you can find examples of gatherings like this. So this kind of event is a second context.

The third context, I'd look at the kind of document this is, which is a report in a newspaper. And think a little bit about reading other newspapers, reading to see if this is typical or atypical. I think its reasonably typical. There are a variety of these similar reports of Patriot events in different newspapers of this time period. And to know a little something about how people are reading this. We know that newspaper subscriptions are skyrocketing at this time. And also that people are reading them in taverns. The taverns tend to subscribe. And even people who are illiterate or don't read that well, can have it read to them in taverns. So that's one of the ways this kind of document gets dispersed throughout the colonies.

And then finally I'd want to think carefully about the chronology, about the moment that this represents of March 1775. It's clearly a divisive moment and a moment when people are under some pressure, here in Providence and in other places, to take sides. To get out there and not to say, "I agree with this or that position, I agree with these rights." But vote with your feet, or in this case, vote with your tea. To show up publicly, and to denounce tea drinking and tea drinkers, and take a side and get off the fence. And that makes sense. It's March 1775, it's after the Boston Tea party, which is December of [17]73, so there's a precedent, these people know there's been destruction of tea, which has been very controversial. The first Continental Congress has met and has encouraged people not to drink tea, so we know these people are supporting the Continental Congress, even though that that's never mentioned in here. And it's about, let's see, a month and a little bit, before the outbreak of warfare, so it's a very tense time in New England.

This is an inventory. An inventory and appraisement of the goods and chattel of a man named Thomas Springer in 1804. And an inventory is a list of the possessions of someone that's taken after that person dies. It's usually the head of the household because that's who owns the possessions. Therefore most of the inventories we have are inventories of men. And it's a document that's created by the fact that wealth in the late 18th, early 19th century, is not so much in the form of things in the bank or things in the stock market, but real estate and actual moveable goods. So when someone dies, the county court appoints appraisers, local men, to go out and look at an estate, see what's there, list it, and estimate its value. And these documents are of immense interest to people who want to know about the possessions and the living standards of people in the past. Particularly about people who aren't famous, or whose things were not saved. You can get a sense of what did this man own at least at the time of his death. What was in his household?

Thomas Springer is someone I got interested in—his possessions are something I got interested in, as a museum curator. It was my job to figure out what this man owned because we, at the Smithsonian, owned the house that he lived in. This was a house built in the 1790s and it's built of logs. And it was collected some time ago. My job was to go back and find out everything I could about the people who lived in this house. Not just Thomas Springer, but his wife, Elizabeth. It's hard to find out about Elizabeth—she doesn't have the inventory. Although there may be hints in here about her life, too.

Like many of these inventories it begins with the wearing apparel of the deceased. The basic thing is coats, jackets, shirts, trousers, hats, boots, drawers. Those are valuable items. You can see that clothing are valuable. They're valued here in 1804 at 30 dollars. You can look at the list of how things are valued and get a sense of what were expensive things and what were cheap things. Many inventories are like this. They're simply a straight list. A few go room by room. They list different rooms. They say, "In the parlor, there was this." Those are usually the inventories of the most well-to-do people because they have a lot of rooms. This man lives in a one-room house, perhaps with a loft upstairs. So you have to picture the inventory men coming through and as you read their list you can get a sense, to some degree, not just of what Thomas Springer may have owned, but of how it may have been arranged or organized.

As you go through you begin to see a place where they tell us certain things about particular belongings. I'd ask the question, "What's really surprising?" Well, one thing is this man owned one thing worth 40 dollars. It's a piece of furniture which is a really expensive item and that's an eight-day clock. One looking glass worth one dollar and an eight-day clock: 40 dollars. So that's kind of interesting. That's a luxury item. And it's certainly a luxury for a farmer to own a clock. You don't need the clock to know when to milk the cows. And that's a sign that this man doesn't live too far from Wilmington, where he's very likely to have purchased this clock. And he's interested in what is a scientific piece of equipment and an expensive one. There's a point as you go down through the list you can learn about . . . unfortunately you get to read something like this in many inventories: "a lot of books, 50 cents." And I'd love to know what the books were. My guess is a bible, okay, what else? I'd love to know what he was reading. But it does suggest people in this household were literate. It doesn't simply say, "a family bible" which might be there whether people read or not. This suggests some people are reading.

You certainly get a picture of a few of their behaviors. They have teacups and a tea table, so they're probably partakers in the afternoon or evening ceremony of tea. There's a part where it seems they've gone from the house, outside. After a lot of "Queensware," which is ceramic ware, you start finding "saddles, saddlebag, blanket and bridle, axes, maul and wedges, sledges, and a crowbar." Here, maybe we've moved to the barn. Maybe we've moved to an outside building of some sort. "Two spinning wheels." Alright, there we're getting a sense possibly, of what women in the Springer household may have done. Maybe that tells us a little something about Elizabeth.

The most shocking thing in the list, that takes you up short, is we find listed, right among the artifacts, people. "One Negro man, named A something-something-Ace." "Nine years to serve. Valued at 180 dollars." Below that, "one old Negro man, a slave, 66 years old named Will, valued at zero." One's first response I think is, as I say, just of shock, that we've been listing horses and bridles and now we've got people, and it reminds us about this time period, that that's a routine, this is a possession. But there's also something else in this list that's interesting. There is one, one of these people is a slave. This is in Delaware in 1804 where slavery is really dying out. It's not as profitable as it is to the South. But here's the "Negro man named Ace, nine years to serve." And that suggests to us that what Ace did was what a lot of African Americans did which was that they negotiated for their freedom in the years after the American Revolution. And that he had some form of agreement with the Springers. That he would work for a certain amount of time, for his freedom, or he would work for a certain amount of time for a set amount of money at the end of it.

To begin with you have to figure out what they are, which in some cases is really hard. A corner cupboard, I sort of have an image of, or thought I did. "Decanters, jars." But something like "Queensware" is worth going and looking up—either in a dictionary or in a local museum or in a ceramics history. "Queensware" is imported ceramics, kind of middling. You can find images of it. Again, you'd always want to compare. That is, in many cases there are very fine examples of something and not so fine examples of something. So you'd want to get a sense of what did most people own. Is this person typical or atypical? Looking at the artifacts themselves is a great help.

The other thing I should mention about moving to artifacts is that there is a wealth of knowledge that people who've studied material culture have about what was typical in certain regions at certain times. And that doesn't mean that your one inventory may not be atypical because he may, his six leather-bottomed chairs, maybe they're a family heirloom and they came down from somebody in some other part of the country. That's possible. But given what we know about how expensive it is to transport things over land or to put chairs on a ship and ship them out, that's unlikely. They are likely to be fairly locally made or at least locally sold. They may have been brought in by boat from say, Philadelphia to Wilmington. And there's a lot of studies that material culture scholars have done to figure out what specifically did people own.

I think probably the main thing about these inventories is that they're most valuable when you have a great number of them and many of the studies of them have been quantitative. So we know what people in say a given county—if you could go to this entire Hundred, Mill Creek Hundred, of New Castle County in Delaware, in a 10-year time period and go through and see what different people owned, that would give you a good idea about what some of these things were. And which of these things were typical, which of these things were extraordinary to this family, if anything. If that's the same or different than it is in other parts of the country, you'd want to know that.

The first thing I'd want to do is know a good deal more about Thomas Springer. It's really hard to know much about him with only this. So, I'd go track down . . . luckily I can find him in tax lists, find out what he's listed as owning at different moments, how much he paid, find his will. I can find a record of his marriage, and his children's birth in the local church. And I can find the deeds of his sales. So I'd want to find out as much as I can about him. And then I want to find out about other people who live in Mill Creek Hundred, or New Castle County, those other people on the tax lists. What their lives are like, how much land they own, what possessions they have. So that I can tell, is this man typical or is he exceptional in some way? And for that I'd want to then locate the document in the context of other documents, particularly in this region. And compare this inventory with the inventory of other people in Northern Delaware in this time period. Maybe take a 10-year period of time and see, of people who die, and paying attention to how old they are when they die. What do they own? How much is it valued at? So I think, that, first Thomas Springer, find out more about him. And then find out more about the other people around him in his community and what's going on in the region in general.

I think what's interesting; the other final context is the context of change in material culture. And probably what's most interesting there is the house itself. Because it's very easy to have an image of 18th-century houses and early 19th-century houses as being several different rooms, high style, with separate parlors, bedrooms. A central hall in the Georgian style. That's what you see when you go to most historic houses because the ones that have been saved are these very nice houses of well-to-do people. And here's a really ordinary house. It's small. We'd have a hard time being comfortable living in this space. And there's no evidence particularly, that Tom Springer or Elizabeth Springer or their children had a hard time living in this space. And this as it turns out is extremely typical. Most people in the early 19th century are still living in one- or two-room houses made of wood. Not made of brick, not fancy, nothing permanent, nothing meant to last all that long.