Phillips’ Elizabeth Dyer Revolutionary War heroine

Phillips’ Elizabeth Dyar

Revolutionary War heroine by Charles Francis O n the evening of December 16, 1773 three companies of fifty men each passed through the crowds of spectators thronging the wharves of Boston Harbor. For the most part, the men bore at least some minimal resemblance to Indians, although it was quite clear to all onlookers that there wasn’t an Indian among them. The hundred and fifty men were, of course, the masqueraders who have gone down in history as the Patriots of the Boston Tea Party.

The little town of Freeman in Franklin County has a direct tie to the Boston Tea Party. That tie comes through Elizabeth Dyar. According to an article in the Franklin County Journal of June 12, 1914, Elizabeth Dyar’s husband Joseph Dyar was one of the “Indians” who helped dump the tea from the three East India Company vessels into Boston Harbor. According to the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), however, the Dyar who took part in the Tea Party was John Dyar, Jr. Regardless, Elizabeth Dyar, herself, is credited by the DAR with helping to disguise the “Indians” by daubing them with war paint. In fact, the Elizabeth Dyar Memorial in Freeman clearly states that “Elizabeth Nichols Dyar [was] one of three young women who mixed and applied the paint to disguise as Indians the men of the Boston Tea Party...”

Elizabeth Dyar came to Maine — along with her son Joseph Dyar — from Malden, Massachusetts in 1806. At the time, Elizabeth Dyar had been a widow for twenty-three years. The Dyars first settled in Phillips and then moved to Freeman. Joseph Dyar was an influential figure in the development of the Free Will Baptist church in Maine. At the time of his mother’s death in 1818, Joseph Dyar placed a simple stone slab at her grave. It gave her name, age (sixty-seven) and extolled the simple lines, “All flesh is grass.” The Elizabeth Dyar Memorial was erected by the Maine Council of the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1924. The memorial, a bronze plaque, also serves to commemorate the patriotic service

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of Joseph Dyar the elder, who died as a result of injuries suffered at the hands of the British.

The Daughters of the American Revolution identifies the other two young women who helped paint the men of the Boston Tea Party as Sarah Bradlee Fulton and Ann Bradlee. The two were sisters-in-law, with Ann being the wife of Sarah Fulton’s brother Nathaniel. Sarah Fulton and her husband John lived in Medford and the Bradlees at the corner of Tremont and Hollis Streets in Boston.

At the time of the Tea Party, Elizabeth Dyar was living in Malden, a town that borders on Medford, where Sarah Fulton lived. Dyar was twenty-two, Ann Bradlee was twenty-seven and Sarah Fulton was thirty-three. The actual painting of the “Indians” took place at the Boston home of the Bradlees. (Neither Medford nor Malden were close enough to Boston Harbor to have

served as a base of operations.)

While it is extremely doubtful that Elizabeth Dyar’s husband Joseph took part in the Tea Party as is stated in the Franklin County Journal, genealogy records do show that John Dyar, Jr. and Elizabeth Dyar’s husband Joseph were related. Joseph Dyar was, however, a bonafide Revolutionary War hero in his own right, as the Elizabeth Dyar Memorial clearly states.

Joseph Dyar was a sea captain who put himself in danger many times by bringing supplies to Patriot forces. In fact, he was captured by the British while making an attempt to reach the beleaguered Continental Army on Long Island and nearly beaten to death. It was as a consequence of this beating that he died in 1783.

As the history books tell us, the Boston Tea Party was one of the sparks that led to the American Revolution. As a result of the actions of “Indians” made

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According to the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Dyar family was marked out by the British for their Patriot activities. At one point Elizabeth and her children even had to be smuggled out of Malden through British lines.

Elizabeth Dyar and the other two women who helped make up the Patriots for the Boston Tea Party have largely been ignored in the pages of history. Of the three, Sarah Bradlee Fulton is the best known, as her name was the answer to a recent Internet trivia question: “Who was the mother of the Boston Tea (cont. on page 68)

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Party?” And, until recently there was a Sarah Bradlee Fulton Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Medford. Today all that remains of that local chapter’s efforts to preserve the memory of Fulton is a small stone in Medford. There is no memorial at all to Ann Bradlee. (cont. from page 67) For the above reasons, the Elizabeth Dyar Memorial in Freeman is especially significant as it stands as one of the very few tributes to a heroine of the Revolution. Those who have continued to care for it over the years can be justly proud of their efforts to keep the memorial to this remarkable woman as a symbol of our nation’s heritage.

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