“Robinson Half Chest” Appears to be Authentic Tea Party Artifact

-by Jon Cotton

Any interesting falsehood becomes “tour guide truth.”  Rumor and speculation are so ingrained in the culture that already within bostontourguide.org’s short two weeks it has seemed an editorial forced move to write a few myth-slaying articles.  Delilah has even started a column called “Truth and the Tales We Tell.”  Idiomatically, one must “wear big boots” to navigate the information disseminated to our guests.  This article is in praise of a museum site which surprised me with its integrity and forced me to recalibrate my evaluative bearings.

The real McCoy

The real McCoy

It began two days ago when I visited the Tea Party Museum (officially “Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum”).  I wrote an article which was very positive, and before I published it I emailed a draft to a knowledgeable tour guide, and also to the the executive director of the museum, Shawn Ford.  Shawn asked me to call him.

“I don’t want to dispute anything that’s a matter of opinion,” he said, “but…” and he referred to my treatment of the “Robinson Half Chest.”  I had used the description “an actual chest from the Boston Tea Party” together with the phrase “so they say.”

“That bothers me,” he said.

I didn’t want to alienate Shawn, but I’m committed to journalistic integrity, so I cautiously said “Okay… is there a reason to believe it’s authentic?”  His answer excited me and surprised me.  It turns out the Robinson Half Chest has been subjected to the kind of forensic investigation you see on criminal shows.  The chest was sent to a company near Chicago called McCrone Associates.

I hung up the phone, and in private eye mode I dialed Chicago and got Joe Barabe on the horn, the man who did the analysis.  The museum spent fifty thousand dollars to investigate the chest.  The result was that particles were detected consistent with the uses to which the Robinson family put the chest – it was used as a receptacle for school supplies – but it was also found to be constructed of wood local to Boston, to have paint residue from the period, and to have residue of tea and of salt water.

The Robinson family lives in Texas but traces its ancestry to Boston, to John Robinson, who was 15 years old in 1773.  He was walking along the beach, so the story goes, and he ran into this chest near Griffin’s Wharf which had not been properly destroyed.  My research indicates that in the days just after the tea was thrown, parties were sent out to ensure that any chests still floating about were properly destroyed.

My skepticism had come from the common knowledge that the tea party was conducted under solemn conditions of conduct: identities were to be kept secret, property was not to be destroyed – and no tea was to be taken!  However, John Robinson is not known to have been one of the sons of liberty, did not fall under its constraints, and was of a rash enough age to steal such a chest and hide it in his house.

Of course it can’t be proven mathematically that the chest was thrown from one of the Boston ships.  The claim can only conform to the standards of historiography.  But, to my happy surprise, it seems to do that.

Truth and the Tales We Tell

By Delilah Webb

Mark Twain once quipped that truth was stranger than fiction, and in the world of tour guides it can be important to remind ourselves that the truth can be just as interesting.  Not only that, but many of us pride ourselves not only on the entertainment value of our tours, complete with humor and character development, but also on the integrity of the content which we share. Many of us have a few consciously selected exceptions to textbook history; I call this the “historical fiction” caveat.  This approach can be the difference between a dry, lecture hall delivery, and an engaging and memorable
experience for our customers.

For instance, when passing the Christopher Columbus Park, after I say that the Rose Garden was dedicated to Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy on her 100th birthday (fact), I
say that on that occasion she was asked what the best part was of being 100, and she responded (with a Boston Kennedy accent for color) “There’s no peer pressure.”

I can’t confirm Mrs. Kennedy’s clever remark, although I suspect it to be based on truth.  Regardless, I use it simply because it works.  Deliberate anecdotal retellings are different from chronically  repeating incorrect information unawares.  It may not bother some
guides, but I, for one, was embarrassed when my longstanding stories were proven to be longstanding falsehoods.  I had always said the Federal Reserve Bank was made of recycled aluminum, and that the Commonwealth Pier was “Boston’s Ellis Island.”  At the end of the day, it’s our responsibility to know fact from fiction.  I am spending the
current “off-season” (aka Winter), independently researching some of the stories we tell, and sharing the knowledge with my tour guide brethren.

-Delilah Webb is a Boston tour guide, a professional voiceover artist, and the bostontourguide.org webmaster.

Tour Guide Fabrication: Commonwealth Pier was not “Boston’s Ellis Island”

by Jon Cotton, editor

Some tour guides claim the Commonwealth Pier was “Boston’s Ellis Island.” Delilah Webb investigated.  There was a Boston “Ellis Island,” but it was in East Boston, torn down last year.  Its proper name was the East Boston Immigration Station. It processed 230,000 people from 1920 to 1955. Some were Nazis and immediately deported. Italian schemer Charles Ponzi was deported to Italy through here.  Read more.

The Boston World Trade Center building on Commonwealth Pier was built in 1901. The following quotation is from wikipedia:

Constructed in 1901 as a maritime cargo handling facility, Commonwealth Pier was the largest pier building in the world at the time. Able to accommodate the largest vessels that entered the port of Boston, this facility was an integral part of city’s maritime industry, handling both freight and passenger traffic, with rail and truck transportation access right on the pier. Commonwealth Pier subsequently underwent two major renovations and continued to host ships through the 1970s, when changes in cargo transport made the Pier obsolete. In the early 1980s, the Massachusetts Port Authority designated Fidelity Investments and The Drew Company as developers of Commonwealth Pier, which they transformed into the World Trade Center Boston in 1986.

thanks to Delilah Webb and Joe Carroll for contributing to this article and to tour guide truth