James Stoddard

(September 24, 1756 – March 11, 1833)

James Stoddard, from Cohasset, Massachusetts, worked as a shipwright, designing and constructing sailing vessels.         

Due to his profession, he would likely have been familiar with the tea crisis and its impact on maritime trade.  

Stoddard’s participation in the “destruction of the tea” on Griffin’s Wharf on December 16, 1773, is mentioned in A Narrative History of the Town of Cohasset, Massachusetts, published one hundred and twenty-five years after the event in 1898, and then again repeated in a Cohasset genealogy publication in 1909. According to these publications, Stoddard reportedly lodged in Boston on the evening of the Boston Tea Party and apparently returned to his quarters after the event with pockets full of loose tea but was fearful for his safety because of it. 

Stoddard served in various militias during the Revolutionary War. He served in the local militia stationed at Hull, Massachusetts, neighboring Cohasset, from December 1775 to April 1776. In that capacity, several days after the Evacuation of Boston on March 17, 1776, James Stoddard led several Cohasset men in capturing a British supply brig that had becalmed and stalled. The following year, Stoddard served three years as an artificer in Captain Noah Nichols’ Company under Boston Tea Party participant Major Ebenezer Stevens’ Northern Department of the Army. 

James Stoddard died in Cohasset, MA, on March 11, 1853, and is buried in Cohasset Central Cemetery.