Archibald McNeil

(June 23, 1750 – January 23, 1840) 

Archibald McNeil, the Boston patriot, not to be confused with the Loyalist baker of the same name, was a ropemaker at the time of the Boston Tea Party. 

McNeil, along with his father William, practiced their profession around Milk St., Fort Hill, Cow Lane, Bibbs Lane, and Atkinson Street Near Howe’s ropewalk in South Boston. On March 3, 1770, an Archibald McNeil Jr. was involved in an incident with off-duty British soldiers at Gray’s Ropewalk. This resulted in a three-day brawl that Peter Slater Jr., a participant in the Boston Tea Party, witnessed. Unfortunately, these tensions culminated in the infamous Boston Massacre on March 5th.  

The ropewalks that the McNeils operated in were in the same vicinity as Griffin’s Wharf, which would have placed them in close proximity to the crisis in Boston over the Tea Act.  

During the Revolutionary War, an Archibald McNeil was commissioned as a First Lieutenant in Captain Ebenezer Torrey’s company of the Boston regiment of Massachusetts on June 7, 1780. Archibald and his father dissolved their partnership in 1794, with Archibald continuing his practice in Charlestown, Massachusetts. As a gentleman of 90 years old, McNeil was cited in his death notice as “one of the party who destroyed the tea in Boston harbor.”  

Archibald McNeil died in Scituate, MA, on January 23, 1840, and is buried in Boston’s King’s Chapel Burying Ground.