John Marston

(1756 – December 13, 1846) 

John Marston was likely apprenticed to his father, also named John Marston, who was the landlord and owner of the Golden Ball Tavern on Merchant’s Row, opposite the store of Boston Tea Party participant Joseph Pearse Palmer. 

The Marstons sold wines from Portugal and rum from the West Indies, as well as running the local tavern. Marston, a Son of Liberty,  enlisted on September 9, 1776, as a Second Lieutenant under Captain Perez Cushing’s company of Colonel Thomas Crafts’ regiment in the Ninth Massachusetts State Militia. In that capacity, he served into the following year and was commissioned as a First Lieutenant in the Continental Army on April 18, 1777. In total, John Marston served a term of 19 months, resigning his commission on February 26, 1779. 

In recognition of his strong business sense, John Marston was among those chosen Clerks of the Market for the town of Boston in 1785. A 1917 book on old Boston taverns says the father, John Marston, was a participant in the Boston Tea Party, but most other sources claim the son. 

John Marston died in Taunton, MA, on December 13, 1846. He is buried in Boston’s Granary Burying Ground.