Joshua Wyeth Coined the Phrase “Boston Tea Party”

First Steps toward a Democratic Government

247 years ago, on 16 Dec 1773, 15-year-old Joshua Wyeth, a Boston blacksmith in training, smeared his face with soot and helped trash an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company.  Joshua was a brave member of the generation of American patriots who fought a war against the tyrant English King George and set the United States on its course to democracy.  Spoiling the tea was a political protest in reaction to the tax British Parliament added to it without input from the Colonies.  Years later, Joshua would playfully be the first person to call the actions of that night in 1773 a “Tea Party.”  However, at the time, the protest was a serious act of rebellion.  He and others in the secret society, Sons of Liberty, saw themselves as patriots fighting to give a voice to American Colonists, but had they been caught, they would have been executed as traitors.  Joshua’s story, and the details of 19 of his children, whose names can be verified, show on pages 211-218 of The Wyeth and Wythe Families of America book. Public domain photo credit: John Andrew, artist, Yale University Art Gallery.

Pfizer purchased WYETH Pharmaceuticals in 2009

Airplane Distribution of WYETH Polio Vaccine 

With Pfizer’s COVID vaccine now rolling out around the world, we are reminded the Wyeth name has been cutting edge in medicine since 1860 when brothers John and Francis Wyeth founded the company that would become the pharmaceutical giant WYETH. The Wyeth and Wythe Families of America book details Pfizer’s purchase of WYETH for a $68 billion cash-and-stock deal. Photos of the brothers, furnished by Pfizer appear, with their stories, on pages 397 and 398 of the Wyeth/Wythe book. The polio vaccine rollout photograph shown here is courtesy of the Wyeth brothers' 2nd great grand nephew William Maxwell “Max” Wyeth IV.