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1780 BENJAMIN EDES Signed, Unlisted Boston Loan, FATHER OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:3,500.00 USD Estimated At:6,000.00 - 8,000.00 USD
1780 BENJAMIN EDES Signed, Unlisted Boston Loan, FATHER OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY
Autographs
1780 Benjamin Edes Signed Extremely Rare Revolutionary War “Boston” Town - Treasury Interest Bearing Tax Loan Certificate: “for the Purpose of carrying on the War.” Signed by “David Jeffries” Deacon of Old South Church as Town Treasurer - Unknown Fiscal Form, Not Listed in Anderson
BENJAMIN EDES (1732-1803). Benjamin Edes instigated and paid for the Boston Tea Party – and, to his death, guarded the secret list of all who participated, a.k.a. “FATHER OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY”; A FOUNDING MEMBER “THE SONS OF LIBERTY”; Bookseller, Printer, Publisher, Journalist, and Patriot; maintained the most radical of Boston newspapers in the period leading up to the American Revolution; a Founding Member of the “Loyall Nine” -- the group that eventually became “The Sons of Liberty”.

DAVID JEFFRIES (1714-1784). Deacon of Old South Church and Town Treasurer of Boston during the Revolutionary War.
June 27, 1780-Dated, Unknown Revolutionary War date, Town of Boston Interest Paying Fiscal Form, Not Listed in the Anderson reference titled, “The Price of Liberty”, Very Fine. Remarkably, this Partially-Printed Document is fully completed in manuscript, made to Newspaper Printer and a “Son’s of Liberty” Founding Patriot, “Mr. Benjamin Edes” who also personally financed the “Boston Tea Party” event. Endorsed on the blank reverse Signed, “Benj. Edes”. This form is also Signed, “David Jeffries” as “Town-Treasurer” on the bottom right face side. This “discovery” Revolutionary War, “Boston, Town-Treasurer” Signed and Issued Interest Bearing Treasury Certificate, measures 2.5” x 6.25” being issued to Benjamin Edes, dated for “one hundred & fifty pounds out of the next Tax with interest until paid... voted the 9th and 14th for the late purpose of carrying on the war... No. 210” and Signed on the verso by Edes. Attractive, having some soiling, handling and tone with some expert outer margin edge conservation, well printed on watermarked laid period paper.

In terms of Patriotic Revolutionary War era activity, the journalist Benjamin Edes is easily the equal of his colleagues Paul Revere and Samuel Adams. His radical newspaper, “The Boston Gazette” was a source of news for the Patriot point of view and the most eloquent supporters of Colonial Liberty often chose it to make their political opinions heard. From 1755 to 1775 they published the Boston Gazette from their press, "opposite to the Prison in Queen-Street." In addition to the newspaper, he and his partner John Gill (1732-1785), printed religious tracts, annual sermons, scientific lectures, almanacs, and advertising broadsides.

More than likely, the Boston and New York chapters of the “Sons of Liberty” were deliberately established at the same time and worked as an underground network in conjunction with each other. It is believed the “Sons of Liberty” was formed out of earlier smaller scale like-minded Patriot organizations such as the “Boston Caucus Club” and “Loyal Nine.” The membership of the Loyal Nine consisted of club secretary John Avery, a distiller by trade, Henry Bass, a cousin of Samuel Adams, Thomas Chase, a distiller, Stephen Cleverly, a brazier, Thomas Crafts, a painter, (*Signing here) Benjamin Edes, Printer of the Boston Gazette, Joseph Field, a ship captain, John Smith, a brazier, and George Trott, a jeweler. All nine men would go on to become active members of the “Sons of Liberty,” and to date four of the nine men are documented to have Participated in the “Boston Tea Party.”

The Patriot organization was formed with their meetings conducted at the historic Green Dragon Tavern in Boston. In fact, “The Sons of Liberty on the 14th of August 1765, a Day which ought to be for ever remembered in America, animated with a zeal for their country then upon the brink of destruction, and resolved, at once to save her…” ~ Is taken from a 1765 “Boston Gazette” newspaper article (*Owned by Benjamin Edes), written by Samuel Adams, referring to the Anti-Stamp Act activists and for the first time in print using the name “Sons of Liberty” See: newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/benjamin-edes-father-boston-tea-party-keeper-secrets/
Article From: NEW ENGLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY:

“BENJAMIN EDES, FATHER OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY AND KEEPER OF ITS SECRETS”

Benjamin Edes instigated and paid for the Boston Tea Party – and, to his death, guarded the secret list of all who participated.

Edes along with John Gill published the Boston Gazette and Country Journal, a leading voice for American independence. The Royal Lt. Gov. Andrew Oliver called it ‘that infamous paper.’

“The temper of the people may be surely learned’ from it,” Oliver said.

Benjamin Edes‘ son Peter was convinced his father would have been hanged or sent to England to be tried if he had fallen into British hands. Peter himself served 3-1/2 months in prison for cheering the patriot side during the Battle of Bunker Hill.

“If my father had been like some other men, he might have been worth thousands on thousands of dollars; but he preferred the liberties of his country to all,“ wrote Peter Edes.

Benjamin Edes:

Benjamin Edes was born Oct. 14, 1732 in Charlestown, Mass., one of seven children of Peter Edes and Esther Hall. He married Martha Starr sometime around 1754. The next year he and Gill took over the Boston Gazette.

Edes helped form the Sons of Liberty and, through the Gazette, agitated against the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts and the tea tax. The newspaper broke news about tax disputes, the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party, and it also served as a mouthpiece for Samuel Adams.

On Dec. 16, 1773, Benjamin Edes hosted a group of men in his parlor before they set out for the Dartmouth, the Eleanor and the Beaver.

His son Peter, who would turn 17 the next day, saw some of what happened. In a letter to his own grandson in 1836, Peter Edes recounted what he remembered of that event.

“I knew but little about it, as I was not admitted into their presence, for fear, I suppose, of their being known,” he wrote.

But he knew more than most.

He remembered that a number of gentlemen met in his father’s parlor in the afternoon before they destroyed the tea. Peter’s job was to make punch for them in another room. He filled the bowl several times.

(The historic Silver Punch Bowl now belongs to the Massachusetts Historical Society.)

Eyewitness Account:

The men stayed in the house until dark, he supposed to disguise themselves as Native Americans. When the sun set, they left the house and went to the wharves where the vessels lay.

Once the men left, Peter went into his father’s room. But Benjamin Edes wasn’t there. So Peter decided to walk to the wharves where he saw 2,000 people.

“The Indians worked smartly,” wrote Peter Edes.

“Some were in the hold immediately after the hatches were broken open, fixing the ropes to the tea-chests; others were hauling up the chests; and others stood ready with their hatchets to cut off the bindings of the chest and cast them overboard. I remained on the wharf till I was tired, and fearing some disturbance might occur went home, leaving the Indians working like good industrious fellows.”

Benjamin Edes did not fall into the hands of the British. During the Siege of Boston, Edes escaped arrest by disguising himself as a fisherman. He boarded a fishing boat and landed on one of the islands in Boston Harbor, from which he escaped to the mainland

He moved to Watertown, Mass., where he continued to publish the Gazette until 1798. Benjamin Edes died on Dec. 11, 1803.

How the Names Got Lost:

Peter Edes later wrote that it was ‘a little surprising’ that the names of the Tea Party remained secret. [My] “father I believe, was the only person who had a list of them, and he always kept it locked up in his desk while living.

“After his death Benj. Austin (a Boston selectman) called upon my mother, and told her there was in his possession when living some very important papers belonging to the Whig party, which he wished not to be publicly known, and asked her to let him have the keys of the desk to examine it, which she delivered to him; he then examined it, and took out several papers, among which it was supposed he took away the list of the names of the tea-party, and they have not been known since.”

____

In the 1760s, as the local response to the Crown's efforts to Tax and control her Colonies intensified, Edes and Gill began to publish political works and broadsides that expressed the colonial point of view. Their spirited denunciation of the Townshend Acts led to an ineffective demand in Parliament in October 1767 that the publishers of the Boston Gazette be tried for libel. Their sympathies earned them appointments as printers to the House of Representatives in 1762 and 1770-1775. Edes, the more politically active partner, was a founding member of the Loyall Nine -- the group that eventually became the Sons of Liberty.

During the Siege of Boston, Gill remained in town (where he was imprisoned for a month for treason and sedition) while Edes removed his press to Watertown. There he continued printing the Boston Gazette and Province paper currency until he returned to Queen Street in October 1776, after the British evacuated Boston. The firm Edes & Gill continued through 1779, when Edes established a new firm, Benjamin Edes & Sons (Peter and Benjamin, Jr.). Peter Edes left to set up his own firm in Connecticut in 1784, and Benjamin, Jr. left ten years later. Peter said of his father's later years:

"If my father had been like other men he might have been worth thousands on thousands of dollars, but he preferred the liberties of his country to all...by placing, like many others too much confidence in the stability of the Continental money, he died a poor man."

In 1799 the elder Benjamin Edes set up a press in his home in Temple Street, and with the aid of his daughter, performed job printing until his death in 1803. His punch bowl descended to his great-grandson, Benjamin Edes, whose widow, Mary Cuming Edes, presented it to the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1871.

This description is a courtesy of the Mass Historical Society.

____

Between 1775 and the early 1790s, the 13 former British Colonies had to devise a way to form a fiscal state that would not only live up to the aspirations of the new society, but also avoid the mistakes that the British state had made in their eyes. Temporary alternatives that were put into place were weak.

The central government relied on both inflation and confiscation. Surprisingly, taxation made very little contribution to war finances as taxes to raise funds were lower than any other major American war. By the end of the war, the outstanding debt of Congress and the states was astronomical.

___

Your Friends and humble Servants,

Signed by Direction of the Committee for Correspondence in Boston, William Cooper, Boston Town Clerk:

To the Town Clerk of , to be immediately delivered to the Committee of Correspondence for your Town, if such a Committee is chosen, otherwise to the Gentlemen the Selectmen, to be communicated to the Town.”

Boston Patriots, the story is ‘spun’ as divine Providence, the unmasking of Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s plot to destroy American liberties within the British Empire.

For months afterwards, newspapers like the Massachusetts Spy, Boston Gazette, and Essex Gazette, filled their columns with Hutchinson’s leaked letters and excerpts of them advancing the Whig narrative of a Loyalist plot to make America subservient to Parliament and the ministry in “all cases whatsoever.” Thus, Patriot communications continued to incorporate two parallel narratives: reasoned constitutional arguments for American autonomy within the British Empire, and an emotional attack on prominent Loyalists for their alleged plots to undermine American liberties.
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