Sketch of design for Edenton Tea Party Plaque
(Elvira Evelyna Moffitt papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
During the period of Jim Crow and Progressivism in the New South, women of North Carolina felt it was their duty to promote issues such as equality, the betterment of public schools, and patriotism. In order to do so, several women’s activist groups were created to advance these issues. In October of 1908 one of the women’s groups, the North Carolina Society of the Daughters of the Revolution (DR), decided to commemorate the fifty-one lady participants of the Edenton, North Carolina Tea Party of October 25, 1774. These women pledged to boycott British tea and cloth because of unfair taxation on imports. The sketch pictured above was later made into a plaque to honor the fifty-one ladies’ defiance towards British control over colonial America. The main text above the teapot reads: “To the fifty-one ladies of Edenton who, by their patriotism, zeal, and early protest against unjust taxation by British authority helped to make this Republic and our Commonwealth possible.” The North Carolina DR was promoting national patriotism by commemorating the fifty-one women in Edenton who played a part in America’s history as the country fought for its independence from Britain.
Posted by Katie Sisler
