William Cox

(April 8, 1750 – July 27, 1833) 

William Cox was a tanner and farmer from Cambridge, Massachusetts, when he participated in the Boston Tea Party.  

A family history of Cox’s wife, Mary Sawin, states that Cox “was of the party who made a teapot of Boston Harbor.”  

Cox’s pension application after the Revolutionary War claimed that he enlisted as a “wagoner” in July 1775 under Captain John Goddard, hauling provisions from Concord, Massachusetts, and wood from Lexington, Massachusetts, to the army at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since he likely served before a formal Continental Army had been formed, the ruling was that he was likely a private citizen hired to act as a teamster, hauling goods from town to town.  

William Cox died and was buried in West Fairlee, Vermont, in 1833. His gravestone claims that “he helped steep tea in the Atlantic.”