Benjamin Simpson

(January 2, 1755 – March 23, 1849) 

Benjamin Simpson was a native of Maine, the northern territory of the Massachusetts Bay colony. At the time of the Boston Tea Party, Simpson was living in Boston, apprenticing to become a bricklayer.            

Given Simpson’s young age of 19 in December of 1773 and his status as an apprentice, he may have followed other apprentices overboard during the “destruction of the tea” to break up the mounds of tea forming alongside the ship’s hull in the low tide. Following Simpson’s death in 1849, his participation in the “destruction of the tea” was made public in a newspaper, based on a paper written by his own hand. Simpson testified that he had boarded the brig Beaver and noted, “We on board the brig were not disguised”, which is similar to the first-person account of fellow tea party participant Ebenezer Stevens. Simpson’s account also describes the brig Beaver containing cargo just under the hatches, and that once the tea was thrown overboard, “the tea was so high by the side of them (the ships) as to fall in; which was shovelled down more than once.” 

Following the Boston Tea Party, Benjamin Simpson returned to Maine. In July of 1775, he joined the military for a few months as a Private in Captain Edward Grow’s company and then again for two months in 1777 as a Corporal in Captain Abel Moulton’s company under Jonathan Titcomb’s regiment in Rhode Island. Simpson later settled in what is now Saco, Maine, as a farmer who also served his community as a highway surveyor and tax collector.

Benjamin Simpson died in Saco, Maine, in 1849.