Henry Prentiss

Henry Prentiss was a young merchant living in Boston at the time of the Boston Tea Party.     

Before the “destruction of the tea,” Prentiss had witnessed the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, writing to his father, Rev. Joshua Prentiss, afterward on the “shocking & maloncolly Scene that was exhibited in this town.” 

After the Boston Tea Party, the Committee of Correspondence in Boston contacted ninety-nine local tea dealers to suspend all tea sales. Prentiss favored banning imported tea from the East India Company but wished to continue smuggling tea into the colony.  

During the Revolutionary War, Prentiss served as a Captain in military campaigns on Long Island, New York, and crossed the Delaware River at Trenton, New Jersey. Prentiss was also a freemason of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts and a founding member of the Boston Chamber of Commerce. 

Henry Prentiss died in Medfield, Massachusetts, on August 31, 1821, and is buried in Boston’s King’s Chapel Burying Ground.