Joseph Mountford/Mountfort

(February 3, 1750/51 – August 11, 1838) 

Joseph Mountfort of the Boston Tea Party was described by his son George as a “zealous patriot” in George’s application to the New England Historic and Genealogical Society.   

According to Tea Leaves, written by historian Francis S. Drake in 1884, he lived on Prince Street in Boston and was a cooper at the time of the Boston Tea Party. 

Beginning in March 1777 through October of 1778, Joseph Mountfort served the Revolutionary cause at sea aboard the armed schooner Lynch. According to Mountfort’s later Revolutionary War pension application, he had sailed on the Lynch as a substitute for one David Pulsifer. After the ship departed France on one of her voyages carrying important dispatches across the Atlantic, she was intercepted by the British ship, Foudroyant. Imprisoned at Plymouth, England, Mountfort and six other inmates escaped in December 1777 and commandeered an open boat to cross the English Channel back to France. Mountfort eventually returned to Boston on the frigate Deane. Joseph Mountfort was granted a military pension of $72.00 per year commencing March 4, 1831. According to his son George, Joseph later spent “fifty years in the Surinam trade.” 

Joseph Mountfort died in Pepperell, Massachusetts, on August 11, 1838, and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.