David Lyon/Lyons

(August 12, 1737 – September 8, 1803) 

David Lyons, a 36-year-old yeoman from Roxbury, Massachusetts, was, according to his wife, a participant in the Boston Tea Party.

In the Lyon Memorial history written by a Lyons descendant, the author claims that Abigail Draper, the wife of David Lyons, “told the story to at least one person […] Mr. Fred D. Lyons of Susquehanna, Pennsylvania.”  

David is described in the family history as “a person of some force of character,” as deduced from the records of the Second Church in Roxbury to which he belonged. In those records, it is repeatedly recorded that “David Lyon was appointed to take care of disorderly persons on the Lord’s day at the meeting house.” David Lyons’s father died when David was just 15, and it is assumed that family duties kept him from volunteering during the Revolutionary War. Two of his younger siblings needed a caregiver, as his brother Benjamin was deaf and mute, and his sister was similarly affected. 

After the war, he was appointed as tax collector for the town of Roxbury in 1781. 

In 1784, he and his family moved to Colrain, Massachusetts, and David became a tavern keeper there. He was a prominent figure in Colrain through the end of his life. David Lyons died on September 8, 1803, and was buried in Chandler Hill Cemetery in Colrain.