One of the seminal moments in American history, the Boston Tea Party, will mark its 250th anniversary on Saturday.
One of those celebrations will take place at Pine Grove Cemetery, where one of the 100 known participants in the Boston Tea Party, Francis Moore, is buried.
“He was a baker in Cambridge and somehow ended up taking part in the Boston Tea Party,” Allen Breed, one of Moore’s descendants, said. “I don’t know how he got there or why he was there, but he was there according to the family legend and according to his obituary, which appeared in the Lynn Record in 1833 when he died.”
Although Breed, who is a Lynn native who is now an Associated Press journalist in North Carolina, will not be on hand at Saturday’s commemoration, his brother, Jamie, will be there..
“It’s always cool to know that an ancestor did something neat like that, and they’re a part of history,” Allen Breed said. “In the research that I’ve done, there’s no list of people that attended. They didn’t have a sign-in sheet.”
He said that growing up, his father often took him to the family plot at Pine Grove Cemetery.
“Francis has a huge stone there. I only knew the basic story,” Breed said. “Dad always made a point of noting that Francis was one of the people who didn’t bother to disguise themselves.”
Breed noted that while Moore died in 1833, the Pine Grove Cemetery was not consecrated until 1850.
“My guess is that (Moore) was reinterred in Pine Grove to be with the rest of the family,” Breed said.
He explained why Moore is buried in Pine Grove.
“One of his daughters, Sally, married my great-great-grandfather Isaiah Breed, who was a big-time industrialist and also happened to be one of the people who founded Pine Grove Cemetery,” Breed said.
Saturday’s event will be at 1 p.m. at Pine Grove Cemetery.
“We just want to have our little tea party and show off the cemetery a little bit,” Arthur Dulong, chairperson of the Pine Grove Cemetery Commission, said. “It should be a good time, just a little time to celebrate our city.”
