Samuel Pitts was the middle of three sons of prominent Boston merchant James Pitts, and like his father, he followed the trade, becoming a merchant himself.
The year before the Boston Tea Party, Pitts joined Hancock’s Corps of Cadets alongside his brother Lendall and a handful of would-be Boston Tea Party participants. On the night of December 16, 1773, he aided his brother and fellow cadets in the “destruction of the tea” at Griffin’s Wharf, presumably on the brig Beaver, which his brother commanded as the boarding party captain.
Samuel Pitts served on several committees in Boston, including the public schools committee in 1774 and the committee to carry out the resolutions of the Continental Congress. Pitts paid a fine to excuse himself from military service in 1776, similarly to his brother Lendall.
Mr. Pitts spent his later years living in luxury, “devoted to domestic comfort and a noble hospitality.”
Samuel Pitts died on March 6, 1805, in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
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