Rare prints, gold coins and countless library books have gone missing from the Boston Public Library in recent years, but one object that has stayed put, at least for the four weeks it’s been on display, is a small pewter teapot said to have belonged to Crispus Attucks, the first man struck down by the British during the 1770 Boston Massacre, a riot largely seen as a precursor to the American Revolution.
Whether the teapot actually belonged to Attucks is as mysterious as are his life and circumstances. Attucks was a man who in death became a hero of the early resistance to British rule, a standard bearer for the anti-slavery movement and a symbol for the local civil rights movement of the early 20th century.
The first written record of Attucks’ existence is a 1750 advertisement in the Boston Gazette placed by Attucks’ slave master:
“RAN-away from his Master William Brown of Framingham, on the 30th of Sept. last, a Molatto Fellow, about 27 Years of Age, named Crispas, 6 Feet two Inches high, short curl’d Hair, his Knees nearer together than common; had on a light colour’d Bearskin Coat, plain brown Fustian Jacket, or brown all-Wool one, new Buckskin Breeches, blue Yarn Stockings, and a check’d woollen Shirt.”
The next written reference to Crispus Attucks comes 20 years later during the massacre’s aftermath. Although the tall, light-skinned black man who took two musket rounds to the chest was identified as Michael Johnson in the coroner’s report, written on the same Thursday he and three other victims were buried, by the following Monday the Boston Gazette had identified him as Crispus Attucks.
The initial identification has led some historians to speculate that Attucks lived under an assumed name to avoid re-capture by the Brown family (slavery wasn’t abolished in Massachusetts until 1783).
Life after death
While he may have lived in relative obscurity — as much as any light-skinned, 6’2” black man could live obscurely in colonial Boston — Attucks, more than any of the other four victims of the British soldiers, grew famous after his death.
“He became a symbol,” says state Rep. Byron Rushing. “All five of them became symbols. When the revolutionary forces got going, they used that day, March 5, as the first, non-British patriotic holiday.”
A 19th century image depicting Crispus Attucks. No 18th century drawings or paintings of Attucks are known to exist.
Rushing points out the Attucks was identified as the ringleader of the mob that confronted the British soldiers during the incident. He also figured prominently in the ensuing trial that saw two soldiers convicted of manslaughter. Attucks and the other victims were buried together in the Granary Burial Ground, going against the 18th century custom which dictated that blacks were to be buried separate from whites.
Soon after, though, the massacre holiday was eclipsed by celebrations commemorating the July 4 1776 day that colonists signed the Declaration of Independence from Britain.
Attucks may have faded from the popular consciousness, along with the names of the other four colonists shot by British troops, were it not for the efforts of abolitionist and black historian William Cooper Nell. In the 1850s, Nell organized commemorations of the Boston Massacre, highlighting Attucks’ role in the struggle for U.S. independence, says historian J. L. Bell, who has written extensively about Attucks and the teapot in his blog, Boston 1776.
Nearly 100 years after Attucks’ death — and more than 70 years after the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts — descendants of Attucks’ master, William Brown, began attending Nell’s commemorations and started to speak publicly of their ownership of his possessions, including a pewter drinking cup and powder horn.
In 1860, Bell notes, James W. Brown, a legislator representing Framingham in the State House, wrote Nell telling him that Attucks belonged to his great grandfather, William Brown. Brown alleged that Attucks, after running away, had returned to Framingham where he remained a “faithful servant” until his death. On the day of the massacre, Brown said, Attucks was in Boston trading cattle.
But as Bell points out, those assertions, shared by other Brown descendants during the 1850s at a time when Boston’s abolitionist movement was in full swing, may have been an attempt to sanitize the family’s involvement in the institution of slavery. The original newspaper report of Attucks’ death identified Michael Johnson as a sailor — an occupation not well suited for a faithful servant.
As Rushing notes, there’s no telling what really happened.
“People have spent a lot of time trying to figure out things about him,” Rushing says. “You have all the the bits and pieces, but there’s no documented information about him after he ran away.”
While the anti-slavery cause ended with abolition in 1865, Attucks’ postmortem career as a noted martyr continued. In 1888, blacks, progressive whites and Irish immigrants, who noted that massacre victim Patrick Carr was Irish, succeeded in placing a memorial to Attucks and the other four victims on the Boston Common.
And in the early years of the 20th century, black newspaper publisher William Monroe Trotter honored Attucks’ memory with ceremonies organized by his civil rights organization, the Equal Rights League.
“They used the Boston Massacre as their holiday,” Rushing says. “They would go down to the site of the massacre, the cemetery where the victims are buried.”
The teapot
The teapot is on display at the Boston Public Library as part of its exhibition, We Are One: Mapping America’s Road from Revolution to Independence. The exhibition marks the 250th anniversary of the Stamp Act, a set of tax laws passed in 1765 by the British Parliament to pay for the so-called French-Indian War, the North American theatre of the Seven Years’ War in which British colonists and their Native American allies fought against New France, ultimately driving the French from Nova Scotia, Quebec and Montreal.
If You Go
What: We Are One: Mapping America’s Road from Revolution to Independence
Where: McKim Exhibition Hall, Central Library
When: Monday–Thursday: 10 a.m.–7 p.m.; Friday–Saturday: 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Sunday: 1–5 p.m. Now through Nov. 29
The taxes prompted protests, including the Boston Tea Party and Boston Massacre, which ultimately led to open rebellion at the dawn of the American Revolution.
While the events leading up to the Revolution are well-documented, Attucks’ own complex and contested history casts significant doubts on the teapot’s authenticity. Bell identifies the donor, who gave it to the Bostonian Society, as Sarah Kimball, a descendant of William Brown. Later, the Bostonian Society gave the teapot to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, now Historic New England.
But whether the teapot actually belonged to Attucks remains an open question, as do many aspects of his life.
If Attucks, as his descendants maintain, returned after his 1850 escape to serve William Brown, it’s more plausible that the teapot belonged to him. If Attucks ran away and spent the next 20 years at sea and roaming the streets of Boston, why would the Brown family have kept the teapot for him?
“The provenance of these ‘relics’ is impossible to confirm, but the two items that survive do appear to date from the early 1700s,” Bell writes in his blog. “They’re also cheap and misshapen, unlikely to have been saved unless the family had invested them with some meaning.”
