Alfred F. Young's The Shoemaker And The Tea Party

In his novel, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution, Alfred F. Young approaches, researches, and answers several inquiries surrounding the Boston Tea Party. He has also done extensive research into the life of a participant in the events of December 16, 1773, George Robert Twelves Hewes. Young provides his readers with an in-depth understanding of Hewes and his connection to the Tea Party and the Revolution in order to answer questions even historians did not consider to ask. George Robert Twelves Hewes, the sixth of nine children, grew up in Boston Massachusetts. Many of his earliest, clearest memories are of him defying figures of authority and getting punished for his rebelliousness. He became an orphan at the age of fourteen. Left with no other choice, Hewes became a shoemaker’s apprentice. He was what Bostonians called “saucy,” because he was placed in an occupation that was not to his liking and with this displeasure arose the threat of insubordination. Therefore, when the time to challenge Great Britain presented itself, Hewes directly and proudly participated in the events of the rebellion. First came the “destruction of the tea” in Boston. After disguising himself in Indian garb and smudging his face with coal dust, Hewes silently lined up with the rest of the men at the wharf. They were divided into three groups, one for each ship resting in the harbor. Hewes and the men in his group boarded one of the ships and proceeded to search for and destroy every chest of tea on board, eventually dumping them all in the harbor. He distinctly remembers throwing a chest of tea overboard with John Hancock, a well-known patriot of the American Revolution. Was Hewes simply defying authority or did this particular event mean something more to him? The poor, including Hewes, thought the Tea Party brought the upper classes down to their level. The wealthy and dominant men had become the poor’s comrades during the Tea Party because everyone, rich or poor, was working towards the same goal, independence from Great Britain. “John Hancock and George Hewes breaking open the same chest at …show more content…
In fact, Hewes’s two biographers were the first to include the term “tea party” in the title of their books. Also, when Hewes arrived in Boston in 1835, a reporter who interviewed him included the phrase in his article for the Boston Traveller, but Hewes did not use the phrase. The term “tea party” could have had several meanings for different groups of people. It was first a comedic way of referring to the very serious event in Boston. This allowed people to be on familiar terms with a slightly startling and perplexing event. It was also implied as a parody of the tea ritual associated with the elite. “The term had an [adjustable] quality, for it could serve a [blue-collar] purpose by [mocking] the rich or it could serve a conservative purpose by reducing a revolutionary action to child’s play” (Young 164).
The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution, written by Alfred F. Young, is a book which connects and explains the series of events leading up to the American Revolution and one of its many forgotten participants, George Hewes. Regarding the Boston Tea Party, Young provides responses to some unthought-of questions which, while not important at the time of the war, are thought provoking