George Pillsbury/Pilsbury

(1753 – February 15, 1832) 

George Pillsbury was a schoolteacher and eventual mariner during the last quarter of the 18th century.   

He was very active in the revolutionary events leading up to the Boston Tea Party. Pillsbury participated in the Stamp Act Riots on August 26, 1765, which resulted in the destruction and looting of then Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s mansion in protest of the Stamp Act. He witnessed the killing of Crispus Attucks during the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, and participated in the “destruction of the tea” on December 16, 1773.  

When the Revolutionary War began in 1775, Pillsbury was forced to flee Boston due to his actions against the Crown and chose to go to sea. He returned to Boston in 1776 and enlisted in the Massachusetts militia. He then returned to sea again in the spring of the following year. He would eventually find himself imprisoned on board the infamous prison ship Jersey, located in New York Harbor, and remained imprisoned there until the end of the war. 

George Pillsbury died on February 15, 1832, and is buried in Boston’s Central Burying Ground.