Charles Conner

(1734 – November 3, 1791)

Captain Charles Conner, tradesman, mariner, and innkeeper, participated in the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773.  

While on board the brig Beaver, he ripped the lining of his coat and waistcoat and filled both with tea. He was discovered by George Robert Twelves Hewes, who hollered, “East Indian,” to differentiate Conner from the “American Indian” tea destroyers. Conner attempted to flee, but was stripped of his clothing as he ran, was covered with mud, and his fellow “Indians… kicked and cuffed him”. It is this act of notoriety that perhaps keeps his name from some lists of Boston Tea Party participants. 

Conner and his family were burned out of their home along with many hundreds of others in the Great Boston Fire of 1760, which destroyed over 300 buildings.  

At the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, he and victim Patrick Carr stood together on King Street when, according to his testimony, “we was there but a few minutes before several Small Arms was fired from a Detachment of Regiment soldiers drawn up near the Custom house instantly upon the guns firg. [firing], the said Patrick Carr, who stood next to me and who had no Stick or any sort of weapon whatever about him, said to me, Conner; that was he wounded…” Conner helped carry Carr from the street to a nearby house, where Carr died. 

In 1776, Conner was drafted from Ward 5 in Boston to serve in the Continental Army, but apparently paid the fine to decline service. 

Charles Conner died in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 3, 1791.