"The folley of Boston Billey"

In honor of our nation’s “great passion for a good detective story” I feel that I have no choice but to revise a common myth about early American history. While many feel that Georgia O’Keefe’s depiction of our nation’s most famous, if only, Tea Party to be an accurate, Lady O’Keefe left out an important event in the story.

There is no reference to Samuel Adam’s sketch of “The folley of Boston Billey”. As seen here, the only known sketch of William Peggy Stewart, more commonly known as “Boston Billey” was reportedly quickly made in a local pub in late December of 1773. To the apparent dismay of “Boston Billey”, it was displayed in the pub for the next 47 years until acquired by Harvard University to be archived.

Samuel Adam’s sketch, though drawn many days after the event, keenly illustrates the events which prompted Paul Revere to write the ballad “The folley of Boston Billey”. The story proposes that Samuel Adams, in an effort to encourage his fellow “Boston Tea Lobbers” exclaimed: “Lads, the moment of truth is upon us. Gird up your loins to cross this sea, and heave with your might yon angry tea.” Boston Billey, simple of mind, mistook the directions and promptly “girded and grasped yon angry tea, and lobbed his loins deep into the sea”.