As the first settlers began to travel north along the Merrimack River in the year 1659, they found immense beauty surrounding them here in Concord. They continued north until they encountered a bend in the Merrimack River and pulled their canoes upon the sandy shore. They viewed the distant mountains, fertile ground and abundance of forests filled with game. The river they sailed was plentiful with salmon and fresh water was found at many locations. The banks of the Merrimack River were lined with high bluffs to provide a vantage point in all directions. The early settlers traveled from the Province of Massachusetts Bay and explored the bountiful land to their north in search of additional settlements as more people immigrated from overseas into the port at Boston.
The Province of Massachusetts Bay granted the Plantation of Pennycook in the year 1725 as additional settlers continued to arrive and establish their homes located near the local Garrisons that were built for protection. These early settlers were predominantly English, born in England and crossing the Atlantic River Ocean arriving in Boston. It was just shy of a decade later the English settlers renamed their new settlement, choosing the name Rumford in 1734. The name “Concord” did not appear until 1853. The little town of Rumford, New Hampshire started to grow and as additional people arrived and stage routes were established between Boston and Rumford, schools were built, shopkeepers opened shops, and mills were built to harness the waterpower to process timbers and grains.
Our little community resembled an English village and with the many English men, woman and children walking the cobbled streets we find the strong English accents and love of all old-world habits. The preferred beverage was taken several times a day, that beverage being tea.
It was a gentleman named Peter Stuyvesant who first brought tea to America and the settlers in New York, where there were very heavy tea drinkers. It has been said that the New York settlers consumed more tea than all of England together. By 1670, the popularity of tea consumption in New York had spread strongly into Boston, but the availability was very limited for the next decade or two. By the time our little town in New Hampshire was further established we find the majority of people in Rumford drinking nothing but tea, preferred by the ladies of the house over spirits such as rum, wine and whisky. As the American colonists marched towards war with England profits were being recognized with the tea trade, between the mother country and the colonies, especially in the ports at Boston, New York and Philadelphia. The Boston tea imported from overseas was shipped to our town and in much demand at the shops on Main Street, so much in demand that England placed a heavy tea tax. The tax on tea fueled the desire as well as the demand for contraband tea that would be smuggled into the colonies with the untaxed tea arriving in Rumford and being consumed by our local ancestors right down on Main Street.
England completed the French and Indian War and the motherland felt they had provided protection to the colonies eliminating any future threats from the French. The English Parliament felt the early colonists should pay for the recent war and instituted taxes on newspapers, marriage licenses, tavern licenses and ship docking permits. Most importantly they bestowed a tax in June 1767 on tea, the very preferred beverage of all colonists. This tea tax further provoked our ancestors and the incensed colonist took swift action by staging a little event south of New Hampshire known as the Boston Tea Party. As the Sons of Liberty planned their raid on the merchant ships at Griffins Wharf in Boston Harbor we find the citizens of Rumford boycotting their favorite beverage, no imported tea was sold down on Main Street and reserve supplies of imported tea were dumped and trampled by pedestrians, horses and wagons by our local ancestors. The only tea consumed here in our town in 1767 was smuggled into the colonies from Holland or concocted and brewed from local sage and sassafras roots.
It was Dec. 16, 1773, when several thousand people gathered around the Old Meeting House in Boston to protest against the unloading of cargoes of tea laden ships that were at anchor in Boston Harbor. As the afternoon sun lowered in the sky, the Sons of Liberty gathered at a local tavern and smeared dark soot on their faces, with feathers in their hair to disguise themselves as Native Americans armed with tomahawks.
The Boston Tea Party commenced as the men left the tavern under cover of darkness, past the meeting house they ran to the harbor and swarmed the vessels. The ship captains and crews were terrified at the sight and ran below as the men fell upon the hatches and took chest after chest of tea from below in the holds. They struck each chest with their tomahawks breaking each open and throwing them into Boston Harbor. The men destroyed 342 chests of tea valued at $100,000. The English firm that exported the tea to Boston and onto those fateful ships was London based and named Messrs. Davison, Newman and Company and boasted in their advertisements for years that their tea caused the American Revolution.
As word of the Boston Tea Party spread north into New Hampshire, the Main Street merchants in our community continued to boycott the legally imported tea from England, the citizens refused to drink the beverage and the Revolutionary War commenced.
As good patriots in the colonies, here in Concord, we became a nation of coffee consumers. Our morning coffee tradition has grown over the decades and Main Street in Concord boasts fine coffee houses.
The tea stained cobblestones on Main Street in Concord, as well as the common English accent once prevalent are both in our past. Though the strong Yankee stubbornness certainly does remain.