Program

Tea: The First Wicked Weed
Women’s Role in Revolutionizing the Colonies.

In December, 1767, the Town Meeting of Harvard, Massachusetts voted to discourage the sale and purchase of items as varied as tea, carriages and ready-made clothing.

Material culture had increasingly made women’s lives easier, the rejection of it shows us that consumers were willing to separate themselves from Britain, beginning the path toward Revolution. Much of the rhetoric centered on TEA: that “wicked weed”.

Dory Codington is a local historian and novelist. As a Freedom Trail and Faneuil Hall Guide, for the National Park Service, she began to investigate the social changes that were necessary to embrace the higher notion Independence and America’s break from Great Britain. She has three novels set during this time period: Cardinal Points, Beside Turning Water and Fate and Fair Winds.