Henry Mellius/Mellus

(April 1, 1756 – February 1832) 

Born in Boston in 1756, Henry Mellus was the youngest of 8 children. He was a mariner by trade, though he could have specialized as a rigger ( a builder and operator of rigging materials on ships, like block & tackles, to lift heavy objects onto and off ships, both at dock and during construction) … as did his sons and family members later in Maine. 

As a very young man on March 5, 1770, Mellus was a witness to the Boston Massacre. It is known that the “Bloody Massacre in King’s Street” inflamed Bostonians of all political persuasions, and it is likely that young Henry would have been privy to gossip and the goings-on at the waterfronts of Boston. Whether the Boston Massacre directly led to Mellus’ eventual participation in the Boston Tea Party is uncertain.  

Due to Mellus’ profession, he was involved in the maritime conflict of the Revolutionary War. After the war, he served as a crewmember aboard the privateer Lyon, a ship seized by the British on August 14, 1791. He later found himself a prisoner in the Old Mill Prison in Plymouth, England. How Mellus was freed and returned to the United States is not recorded.