If you’ve taken a history class on the American Revolution, you probably learned about the Boston Tea Party — the famous protest where men threw tea into the harbor over what they called “taxation without representation.”
But you might not have heard about the Edenton Tea Party — a women-led protest for the same cause. It took place almost a year later, right along North Carolina’s coast.
Listener Wayne Turner wanted to know more about the significance of this event. For this edition of Carolina Curious during Women’s History Month, WFDD’s Amy Diaz has “the tea.”
The protest took place in October of 1774. The Parliament of Great Britain had recently passed the Stamp Act, Townshend Acts and the Tea Act, all greatly affecting the lives of the colonists.
And people were fed up — including a wealthy Edenton woman named Penelope Barker. She’d been widowed twice by the time she was 28, and her third husband had been in England for more than a decade.
Wingate University Archivist and History Professor Rich Carney thinks Barker’s life of independence positioned her to lead a boycott of British goods.
“She could run the house, she could run the farm. She could do all the stuff," he said. "And since she controlled that, she had control over what could be boycotted.”
Barker persuaded 50 other women to give up their ritualistic beverage and sign an agreement saying they would no longer buy British tea or cloth.
They wrote that they couldn’t be indifferent when the “peace and happiness” of their country was at stake. Their statement, along with their names, was published in multiple newspapers.
“So while it isn't as dramatic as men dumping tea into a harbor, it was still radical, because at that time, women did not get involved in politics," Carney said. "They were not given power, but they did have power, and so they just found a way to use their power.”
Women were the ones who bought the clothes, tea and other goods for the household. So their boycott would be impactful.
But it was risky. Defying the king like that was treasonous. And if their husbands were more loyal to the crown, they’d be defying them too.
Carney says the women were praised in the colonies but ridiculed in England. A political cartoon published in London depicted the women with masculine features, neglecting their motherly duties, as if they were pretending to be men.
But their protest, which is considered to be one of the first led by women in the thirteen colonies, made an impact.
“It did strengthen the boycott movement. And then I think it's symbolic of the fact that it wasn't just male political leaders leading this revolution," Carney said. "It was women who were affected by what was happening around the colonies. They weren't afraid to step up and help fight for the cause of the American Revolution.”
Penelope Barker’s house is still standing and functions as Edenton’s Welcome Center. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.