Because of events leading to the American Revolution, tea will always be linked with Boston. In fact, tea, coffee, and chocolate all arrived in Massachusetts during the seventeenth century.
“I have drank coffee every afternoon since, and have borne it very well…Tea must be universally renounced, I must be weaned, and the sooner the better.”
– John Adams to Abigail, 1774 (one year after the Boston Tea Party)
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- Peter Lely
Tea Time
Despite its association with England, tea was slow to catch on at first. Cultivated in China, it took several routes into Europe. By the seventeenth century Dutch merchants were aggressively involved in the tea trade while Portuguese merchants brought it to the Iberian Peninsula. When England’s King Charles II married Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza in 1660, tea was suddenly favored in court. Its popularity spread among the English upper classes.
Coffee in Massachusetts
In 1670 Dorothy Jones received the first license in Massachusetts to sell “coffee and cuchaletto” (chocolate.) Coffee may have originated in Ethiopia. It then spread to Arab nations and Turkey, its popularity enhanced by Islam’s ban on alcohol. Italian and Dutch merchants, trading with the Middle East, bought the drink to Western Europe. By the 1660’s coffee houses were opening in London. Several coffee houses also opened in seventeenth century Boston.
How Do You Take Your Tea?
When tea was a novelty, the Philip English family of Salem heard that it should be prepared by boiling. After boiling, they poured off the water and served the tea as a vegetable. Later some Salem residents improved the taste with salt and butter before discovering that tea was a drink.
- Public Domain Review
- Graphics Fairy
- Blandon Campbell
- Massachusetts Archives