Tom Thomson wants to set the record straight: The Boston Tea Party was not the first flash of rebellion against the British.
That credit should be given to the Pine Tree Riot in Weare. Thomson, a tree farmer based in Orford, knows many people in New Hampshire are already familiar with this event. But in honor of the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, he’s determined that more people should be aware.
“History is there [in Weare], and anyone could go and look at it,” he said. “New Hampshire, once again, is number one for many, many positive things.”
The revolt may not be as well-known around the country, but it is credited with setting the stage for the American Revolution and leading to the country’s declaration of independence.
A local revolt
The events leading up to the riot on April 14, 1772, began nearly a century beforehand. White pine trees in the Americas were favored by the Royal Navy for the masts on its ships. With widespread deforestation in England, the king ruled in 1690 that every white pine growing in a British colony belonged to the British.
The edict forbade cutting down white pines over 24 inches in diameter. The diameter limit was reduced to 12 inches in 1722; anyone who cut down these trees was subjected to heavy fines.
Thomson said the restriction was a great loss for the colonies, where the wood was used for building houses. A 16-foot log with a 24-inch diameter could produce 425 board feet; a log of the same height at a 12-inch diameter could only yield 95 board feet of usable wood.
“It was a huge taking of what the property owners owned, and that’s why they were so upset about it,” Thomson said.
The law was not strictly enforced in New Hampshire until a new governor came into power in 1767. He and other surveyors of the king’s woods conducted inspections of mill yards and imposed fines on those who wished to cut trees without punishment. Mill workers from Goffstown and Bedford paid the fine — but those in Weare did not.
On April 13, 1772, the county sheriff and his deputy arrived in Weare to deliver warrants and arrests of “notorious offenders.” They stumbled on one such offender, Ebenezer Mudgett, who said he would pay his fine the next day. While the officers retired at the local inn for the night, Mudgett and over 20 men conspired a plan to storm their room.
The next morning, the men stormed the inn and beat both the sheriff and the deputy with long rods, taking away their pistols in the process. They also went after their horses, shearing their manes and tails.
“For the first time, it was a group of people that said, ‘Enough is enough with the king, and we’re pushing back. We’re not going to let them run or push us around like this,'” Thomson said. “That was truly the spark that gave the confidence to the others that came after them.”
‘One link in the chain’
Tom Flaherty, the vice president of the Weare Historical Society, said the Pine Tree Riot was “one link in the chain” of the events leading up to the Revolutionary War.
Boston was a more urbanized society than any part of New Hampshire, Flaherty said, but Mudgett and his men’s uprising set the scene for revolutionary events like the Boston Tea Party, which happened one year later.
“It showed people there that there were people that had the same mindset in other places, of this resentment towards the king and the laws, so I think that’s pretty key,” he said.
Flaherty said a trial occurred six months after the Pine Tree Riot, where the eight men were charged and given a light fine — less money than they were fined for illegally cutting down white pines. The rebelling mill workers had no representation in government and had no way of addressing their grievances in a formal way.
With their backs against the wall, the people in Weare felt they had to act out of hostility to gain any kind of hope for change, Flaherty said.
“This was a bunch of people who could have gone to prison — the British could have taken them away, put them in prison — so they were at high risk for losing everything, really,” he said. “They took severe action at the time at high risk, and it ended up working out for them, fortunately, but it really could have gone the other way.”
