What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

“Best Bohea TEA, Such as Fishes never drink!!”

Nearly three months after the destruction of tea now known as the Boston Tea Party, William Beadle of Wethersfield, Connecticut, published an advertisement that alluded to the event.  “Best Bohea TEA, Such as Fishes never drink!!” he proclaimed in a notice in the March 8, 1774, edition of the Connecticut Courant.  Two manicules, one at each end, directed readers to the phrase “Such as Fishes never drink!!”  The double exclamation points gave the comment even more exuberance, especially considering that exclamation points rarely appeared in eighteenth-century newspaper notices.  Beadle’s advertisement certainly differed from those placed by merchants and shopkeepers who assured prospective customers and the public that they did not stock tea and, by extension, opposed Parliament’s attempts to impose duties on the colonies.

What message did Beadle intend for readers of the Connecticut Courant?  What kind of commentary did he offer about consumer politics?  James R. Fichter examines Beadle’s advertisement in his recently published Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773-1776.  Fichter indicates that Beadle’s neighbors “knew him as a man … who dabbled in dark and ambiguous humor.”  Some of that humor was on display in his previous advertisements.  Perhaps Beadle made a joke “at the expense of the Boston tea partiers or the drinkers deprived of their tea.”  After all, humor about the destruction of the tea already spread.  As Fichter recounts, Peter Oliver, a noted loyalist, reported that “some Bostonians abstained from eating local fish ‘because they had drank of the East India Tea.’”  Was Beadle taking a political position and mocking the excesses of patriots in Boston and other cities and towns who stopped selling tea?  Fichter also suggests that Beadle could have been “drawing attention to Connecticut not having a tea boycott” or he might have meant that he carried Dutch tea smuggled into the colonies.  Consumers could purchase and drink such tea with a clear conscience since it had not been subject to Parliament’s duties.  Yet Beadle may not have been making a political argument at all.  Perhaps he just wanted to publish the boldest advertisement, gain the most attention, and garner the most customers among merchants and shopkeepers who continued to advertise and sell tea in Connecticut.  According to Fichter, “Tea advertising remained common in Connecticut, and Beadle bore little burden for his cheek: he placed generic advertisements for tea throughput the spring and summer of 1774 and early 1775.”[1]

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[1] James R. Fichter, Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773-1776 (Cornell University Press, 2023).