18. A woman helped plan the Boston Tea Party
When Bostonians rebelled against the tax on tea, levied by Parliament to protect the monopoly held by the East India Company, they thinly disguised themselves as Indians. The idea for the disguises came from Sarah Bradlee Fulton. Sarah both contributed to the disguises and helped apply the “warpaint” to the men’s faces. After the Tea Party, several of the men were followed back to her brother’s carpenter shop, where the disguises were removed by Sarah and her sister-in-law. The disguises didn’t fool anybody, but they prevented identification and arrest of specific individuals. At the very least, it gave the British an excuse not to arrest anyone, which if they had likely would have led to further acts of violence in the troubled city.
Sarah Fulton, the wife of a Medford merchant, continued to serve the Patriot cause after war began. She delivered bandages to Cambridge and nursed the wounded following the Battle of Bunker Hill. She carried messages from Boston to General Washington at Cambridge during the British occupation, receiving Washington’s personal thanks after the British abandoned the city in 1776. Sarah also delivered firewood to the Americans in their encampments. In one recorded instance, she confronted British troops who had confiscated a firewood shipment, reclaiming it despite their threatening to shoot her. Other than in Boston, Sarah Fulton’s contributions to the American Revolution are largely forgotten.