Summary Of The Shoemaker And The Tea Party

The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution is a two part book that follows the life of George Robert Twelve Hewes and investigates the origins of the term “The Boston Tea Party.” This book is basically an extremely long essay written by Alfred F. Young as he pulls information from two biographies written about Hewes. The first biography was A Retrospect of the Boston Tea Party by James Hawkes and the the second titled Traits of the Tea Party by Benjamin Bussey. Young in discovering these books about Hewes found it interesting that this one man could have witnessed, experienced, and survived through the time and events in which this country was created; that he wasn’t recognized and taken interest in until the end of

He was in the crowd that provoked British Soldiers to fire upon them in what we now today as the Boston Massacre, and even knew a few of the victims. Probably the most interesting and popular experiences Hewes had was being apart of the destruction of tea in the Boston harbor. This act of dressing up as an Indian to destroy tea would not be really remembered or called the Boston Tea Party until many years later. In Hewes old age, he left his home to travel to Boston to be celebrated as Americans began to remember the events of the revolution and recognize him as the oldest living Member of the Boston Tea

As people in the 1830s began to remember the american revolution, Hewes was brought into the spotlight is his old age for still being alive and having been apart of so many events first-hand in the revolution. He did his first interview with James Hawkes in his home in 1833. Hawkes used this interview to produce the book A Retrospect of the Boston Tea Party. A year later, Hewes left his home in Richfield Springs, New York to travel to Boston to be recognized and celebrated. While he was there, he did another interview with Benjamin Bussey which became the book Traits of the Tea Party. What Young found interesting about both of these of books is that they are both have within there title the first ever mention of the phrase “Boston Tea Party.” He shows the evolution in which the names of the event took over the years in between the destruction of the tea happening to when the name “Boston Tea Party” caught. Young goes on to discuss several other interesting thoughts. He discusses why the people suddenly began to remember the revolution so intensely 60 years after the events occurred. He also gathers information about why Hewes told Bussey more information and why he would remember more for busy than Hawkes based on memory studies. Young takes a very interesting look into these subject alongside his Tea Party investigation to add some depth to his