Tea chest label reveals 19th century origins
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Tristan Brown, a history professor at MIT, determined that a tea chest label long believed to be from the 1773 Boston Tea Party actually originated in the 1860s or 1870s.
Brown re-examined a label donated to Old South Meeting House by descendants of Thomas Wells, a Boston blacksmith. He identified the Chinese characters as a phonetic rendering of “Smith, Archer & Co.”, a US firm importing tea.
Brown traced the label’s history to a Wells family member who travelled to California during the Gold Rush and later ran a business called the California Tea Store. He believes the story connecting the label to the Boston Tea Party emerged during 1870s centennial celebrations. Brown frames his finding not as disproving a historical claim, but as demonstrating how objects gain historical importance and how memories are constructed.
He notes that even museum artifacts can offer new insights when researchers ask different questions.
