Samuel Cooper

(1756 – August 29, 1840) 

Samuel Cooper was a 17-year-old cooper’s apprentice living in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1773.  

He is one of the few participants to offer a first-hand account of his participation in the Boston Tea Party. Of that fateful night, he wrote, 

“Immediately after a detach’t of about 20 men disguised as Indians was seen to approach in single file by the west door of the Church. They marched with silent steps down the … Arrived at the wharves they divided into three troops each with a leader gained possession of the ships quietly and proceeded to lighten them of their cargo by hoisting out the boxes and emptying their contents into the dock. No noise was heard except the occasional clink of the hatchet in opening the boxes and the whole business was performed with so much expedition that before 10 o’clock that night the entire cargo of the three vessels were deposited in the docks.” 

During the Revolution, Samuel Cooper was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in Colonel John Crane’s artillery regiment beginning on January 1, 1777. He later served as Quartermaster through December 31, 1780. By the end of the war, he rose to the rank of Adjutant. After the Revolution, Cooper settled in New York City, New York, where he reportedly served as “inspector of pot and pearl ashes” from 1808 to 1830. 

Samuel Cooper died near Alexandria, Virginia, on August 29, 1740. He is buried in Christ Church Episcopal Cemetery in Alexandria.