William Etheridge

(1739 – 1789) 

By the time William Etheridge was throwing tea off the deck of a ship in 1773, he was well connected to members of Boston’s patriotic movement.

According to historians, Etheridge was a 34-year-old mason and bricklayer from Boston, Massachusetts, who did masonry work on ships and buildings owned by merchant Caleb Davis, who, though he did not join Etheridge in the tea’s destruction, was a prominent member of the Boston Committee of Correspondence. Two years before the tea arrived in Boston William Etheridge purchased land with a house from Son of Liberty and would-be Boston Tea Party participant William Molineux, who was instrumental in many driving patriot mechanisms during the tea crisis. On December 16, 1773, Mr Etheridge’s apprentice, Samuel Sprague, joined a few friends, at the expense of an arranged meeting with a future wife, to board one of three ships at Griffin’s Wharf and there recognised his own master bricklayer also throwing tea. Additionally, William Etheridge was married to Mary Bradlee, sister of David, Nathaniel, Josiah, and Thomas Bradlee, who all purported to be destroying tea on the night in question along with Etheridge. 

William Etheridge died in Boston, Massachusetts before 1789. His exact death date and place of burial is unknown.