Edenton Tea Party
- History Fix Podcast
- 1 day ago
- 11 min read
Mini Fix # 36
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We all know about the Boston Tea Party. You do, especially if you listened to or watched last week’s History Fix episode. But, I failed to include one, somewhat significant detail. At the time that this protest occurred, the dumping of $3 million worth of tea into Boston Harbor in December of 1773, and for many years afterwards, we had no idea who these men were who participated. Since, we’ve been able to painstakingly cobble together a list of at least 116 names of men we think were part of it, based on spotty oral history, property deeds, land grants, pension applications, and Sons of the American Revolution lineage applications. But, at the time, participants of the Boston Tea Party, fearful of being executed for treason for their rebellious act, swore an oath of secrecy. However, less than one year later, something rather remarkable happened in Edenton, North Carolina. There 51 women met to write and sign the Edenton Resolves, openly boycotting British tea and cloth. This bold move was one of the first organized political acts by women in US history, something so unheard of at the time it shocked the world. But what’s really remarkable about it is that these women, wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, did not hide behind anonymity like so many patriotic men were doing across the colonies. They signed their real names: Abigail Charlton, Margaret Cathcart, Anne Johnstone, Jean Blair, Grace Clayton, Frances Hall, Mary Jones, Rebecca Bondfield, Sarah Littlejohn, Penelope Barker, Elizabeth P. Ormond, and the list goes on. All 51 of them. Courageous names praised in the colonies, ridiculed in Britain, and mostly forgotten about ever since. Let’s fix that.
Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to a mini fix episode of History Fix. Last week’s episode was about the history of tea but it was really mostly about the Boston Tea Party in response to Britain’s Tea Act of 1773 which then led to the Intolerable Acts which directly led to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But the Boston Tea Party, while the most well known, certainly wasn’t the only protest that mattered around that time. There were many. And pretty much all of them were led, organized, and executed by men, of course. So, for some context, we need to travel to Edenton, North Carolina in 1774. Edenton is not far from where I live on the Outer Banks, just up the Albemarle Sound at the mouth of the Chowan River. While a somewhat quaint and sleepy town now, Edenton was an international port in the 1700s. It was listed on ships papers as the “Port of Roanoke.” In 1774, it would have been considered bustling as far as colonial towns were concerned. In fact, it was the second largest town in the North Carolina colony at the time, after Wilmington which was an even bigger port farther to the south.
So to be a wealthy white woman in Edenton in 1774, what was that like? Well, on the one hand, because of its status as a bustling port city, and a lot of wealth from merchants and plantation owners, and politicians, there was a lot of high society in Edenton. There would have been opulent dinner parties and balls with fancy dresses sewn from expensive European fabrics. Edenton was one of the most socially active towns in North Carolina. Think of it like, if you’ve ever watched Bridgerton which is set in London, you know 40 years after this, but there are balls, they stroll the promenade, they call on each other for tea, this group of social elite, the ton, right, this is what they do. They just dress up fancy and get together and gossip. That’s what it would have been like in Edenton at this time, for the most part. And when you consider that kind of lifestyle, it’s really the women who are in charge. It might seem like the men as they go about their work as politicians or merchants or whatever. But it’s really the women. They organize all that. They pick out the fancy fabric, they select the tea, they plan the parties and the balls and the feasts. They’re making a lot of these decisions and, worth mentioning, they have, of course, either hired help or enslaved people carrying out this work for them. It’s not like they’re doing all this themselves, far from it, but they are the managers of the household and that would have been a big job and a mostly completely overlooked work load, an invisible job.
Now, perceptions of women in the 1770s, though, did not at all match what they were obviously capable of doing as managers of sorts. They were seen as docile, unintelligent for the most part, unthreatening, sort of subservient to their husbands. It would have been completely unheard of for women to be activists of any kind or to be involved in politics at all. But, 1773 with the passing of the Tea Act and the Boston Tea Party that followed, other colonies are starting to act too. And in North Carolina, Provincial Deputies decided that the colony as a whole was going to boycott all British tea and cloth received after September 10, 1774. Now who does tea and cloth affect the most? Who is buying tea and cloth? Who is mostly drinking it? Mostly wearing it? The women. And so this declaration by the Provincial Deputies in North Carolina, by men, really required that women be onboard as the managers of these sorts of goods within colonial households.
So, the women in Edenton simply realized this. They realized, if the right thing to do, if the patriotic thing to do is to boycott British tea and cloth, and we are the purveyors of British tea and cloth, then we, as women, need to take a stand. This stand was dreamt up and organized by a woman named Penelope Barker. Penelope was rather a remarkable woman for Edenton in the 1700s. She was born into a well off family in 1728. Her father was a physician and her mother was the daughter of wealthy politician and plantation owner, James Blount. But, despite being born into the social elite through her mother’s side, Penelope’s life was far from easy. Penelope was 17 years old when both her father and older sister died. Now Penelope was without a male caretaker, for lack of a better word because, you know, women really couldn’t do much of anything without a man, a father or a brother or a husband, of which she had none now. Also, her sister had 3 children that no longer had a mother. And so, killing two birds with one stone, Penelope married her sister’s widower with whom she had 2 sons. But, he died soon after, leaving her alone with 5 children. She married again soon after, of course, she would have had to, a wealthy planter and politician named James Craven, but he also died soon after. And, if people didn’t die so young and so easily back then I might start to get suspicious about Penelope as a sort of black widow figure, but no, I don’t think that was the case. But when her second husband died, she inherited his entire estate which was substantial and she became one of the wealthiest women in North Carolina. A few years later, when she was 27, so all of this in the span of about 10 years, she married again, this time to an attorney named Thomas Barker who was 16 years older than she was. They had 3 children, none of whom survived past infancy, sadly. In 1761, her husband, Thomas Barker, was sent to England as an agent of the North Carolina colony but he was unable to return for 17 years. My source says due to the American Revolution and the British blockade but that can’t be right because, 1761, the American Revolution didn’t start until 1775, 14 years later. So what kept him from returning for those first 14 years? I don’t know. Dude went to England and didn’t look back. So, in his 17 year absence, Penelope was essentially a free agent, managing her own affairs as she pleased without needing to get permission from or appease a man. And she excelled at it. According to the National Women’s History Museum quote “Barker had become a formidable woman and a leader in her community. She used her business and organizing skills to support the Revolutionary cause, integrating women as active participants,” end quote.
And so in October of 1774, it was Penelope Barker who gathered 50 other Edenton women together at the home of Elizabeth King to make this sort of pledge, as women, that they would support the cause of boycotting tea and cloth. Here is what they wrote quote “Edenton, North Carolina, Oct. 25, 1774. As we cannot be indifferent on any occasion that appears nearly to affect the peace and happiness of our country, and as it has thought necessary, for the public good, to enter into several particular resolves by a meeting of Members deputed from the whole Province, it is a duty which we owe, not only to our near and dear connections who have concurred in them, but to ourselves who are essentially interested in their welfare, to do every thing as far as lies in our power to testify our sincere adherence to the same; and we do therefore accordingly subscribe this paper, as a witness of our fixed intention and solemn determination to do so,” end quote. And then they signed all of their real names, all 51 of them.
This declaration of sorts, the Edenton Resolves, was published in the Postscript of the November 3, 1774 edition of the Virginia Gazette newspaper and then, by January 1775 it made its way across the ocean to London newspapers. When the resolves were mailed to London to be published in their newspapers, it was sent with a letter of introduction sort of explaining what this was and that letter was also published with it in the newspapers. Now, we don’t know who wrote this letter. It was written by a man, we know that, but he, unlike the women in Edenton, did not sign his name. He wrote quote “Extract of a letter from North Carolina, Oct. 27. The Provincial Deputies of North Carolina having resolved not to drink any more tea, nor wear any more British cloth, &c. many ladies of this Province have determined to give a memorable proof of their patriotism, and have accordingly entered into the following honourable and spirited association. I send it to you, to shew your fair countrywomen, how zealously and faithfully American ladies follow the laudable example of their husbands, and what opposition your matchless Ministers may expect to receive from a people thus firmly united against them,” end quote.
So what was the response to this, what would come to be called the Edenton Tea Party? Well, in the colonies these women were celebrated as patriots for the cause, of course. In England they were ridiculed, of course. Women participating in politics in this way simply was not done, especially in England and so they were shocked, but they were also shook to be quite honest. They sort of tried to brush it off and belittle it like it was nothing but it’s obvious that it actually really affected them, that they were shook by this. For example, we have a letter written by London resident Arthur Iredell to his brother James Iredellwho lived in Edenton. Arthur wrote quote “The Edenton ladies, conscious, I suppose, of this superiority on their side, by former experience, are willing, I imagine, to crush us into atoms, by their omnipotency; the only security on our side, to prevent the impending ruin, that I can perceive, is the probability that there are but few places in America which possess so much female artillery as Edenton,” end quote. This is drenched in sarcasm. He’s belittling them, mocking these women. He’s brushing off this threat, but at the same time, he’s acknowledging the threat. And so, while Arthur Iredell can pretend to laugh it off and dismiss it, he’s clearly been affected by the actions of these women, which of course was the whole point. There was also a rather offensive political cartoon by artist Phillip Dawe published in March of 1775 called “A Society of Patriotic Ladies, at Edenton in North Carolina” showing a sort of satire of the signing of the Edenton Resolves. In it, one woman is being seduced, a child is on the floor being completely neglected, and the leader of the group has had her face replaced with that of a British politician, a man’s face. I think Wikipedia says it best quote “This satirical cartoon being published by an Englishman exposes the impact the Edenton Tea Party made. If Phillip Dawe felt the need to satirize the women involved, then the boycotts are undeniably affecting the British. The point of the cartoon is clear: women who get involved in politics are mannish, bad mothers, and morally loose. Dawe's representation of the Edenton Tea Party echoed larger societal standards that the women were being judged against,” end quote.
But while men in London are behaving like 3rd grade bullies with damaged egos, it’s a totally different story in the colonies where the women in Edenton were heralded as patriotic heroes. They also started a whole movement really. After coming forward, taking a stand, and using their often ignored voices to proclaim their determination to boycott tea and cloth, other women across the colonies followed suit, swearing off tea altogether, and making their ballgowns out of homespun fabric instead of fancy cloth from London.
In the centuries that followed, this daring act by women in Edenton was mostly forgotten about. There was a book published in 1892, that’s the next mention of it, almost a hundred and twenty years later. Then another book in 1907 published by the Daughters of the American Revolution. And that’s pretty much it. In 1908, a plaque was dedicated to the women and placed in the state Capitol building in Raleigh and in 1940 a historical highway marker was placed in Edenton that reads “Women in this town led by Penelope Barker in 1774 resolved to boycott English imports. Early and influential activism by women.” And that’s it really. And so, actually, I think I’m going to release this mini fix to the masses. I hope my Patreon subscribers won’t mind sharing. Usually these mini fixes are just for subscribers but I feel like this story needs to get out. It’s too important. It’s pivotal, in fact. Because what this story teaches us is that even marginalized, even suppressed, even belittled, even often overlooked and forgotten voices can be heard. And sometimes, they’re even more powerful than the usual droning of the same old voices we always hear. They’re unexpected, they’re eye opening, they’re shocking, and sometimes that’s exactly what it takes. It’s also a reminder that, while our world appears to be run by a select few, mostly still men, mostly still white men, all white men back in the 1700s. While these guys appear to be in charge. They really aren’t. They’re just the figureheads. We, the masses, we are in charge. We make the decisions. We decide what to buy. We decide what to do. We decide who to support, who to vote for. We run the show. The politicians are the actors on stage. They’re the ones the audience sees, who the audience claps for, gives flowers to. They appear to run the show, but they don’t. In reality, they just do what they’re told. It’s really the stage hands, lighting, audio technicians, hair and makeup, costume designers, choreographers, stage managers, writers, directors and producers. That’s who runs the show and none of them are on stage. You don’t have to be on stage to make a difference. You just have to let your voice be heard. And sometimes, you have to be brave enough to sign your name too.
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