TEA LEAVES: - Yesterday Image

The names of four members of this family are prominently associated with the tea
episode at Boston. James Pitts, the father, (H.U., 1731,) an eminent and wealthy
merchant, who, as member of the Governor's Council, thwarted the chief-magistrate,
Hutchinson, in his efforts to have the tea landed, and who died in Dunstable, Mass.,
January 25, 1776; aged sixty-four. His sons,—John, born in 1737, (H.U., 1757,) a
selectman, and on the committee to urge the consignees to resign; an active member of
the committee of correspondence, of the Provincial Congress of 1775; Speaker of the
House in 1778, and member of the senate in 1780-84, who died at Tyngsboro', Mass., in
1815; Samuel, born in 1745, an officer in the company of cadets, said also to have been
one of the tea party, and Lendall, the leader of the party, noted above, who was clerk of
the market in 1775-6, and an officer in Hancock's cadets. The sons all had Huguenot
blood in their veins, their mother being a sister of James Bowdoin. All were merchants,
and active Sons of Liberty, and prior to the Revolution, were in business together,
engaged in extensive commercial transactions. Pitts's wharf was just north of Faneuil Hall
Market. Pitts Street perpetuates the name and fame of this noted family; no one of their
descendants bearing the name now surviving in Boston. The Pitts mansion, a favorite
place of meeting[cxlv] for the Boston patriots, occupied the ground now covered by the
Howard Atheneum. The accompanying portrait of Lendall Pitts is taken from a painting
owned by his grandson, Lendall Pitts Cazeau, of Roxbury.
For many of the above facts I am indebted to the Pitts "Memorial," by Daniel Goodwin,
Jr., of Chicago.
THOMAS PORTER,
A merchant, formerly of Boston, died in Alexandria, Va., in June, 1800.
Captain HENRY PRENTISS,
Born in Holliston, Mass., March 27, 1749, died in Medfield, Mass., August 31, 1821; son
of Rev. Joshua, forty-five years pastor of the Holliston church. Captain Prentiss served
during the Revolutionary war, at Cambridge, at Long Island, and at Trenton. He was an
Overseer of the Poor, in Boston, in 1784; a member of the Ancient and Honorable
Artillery Company in 1786; a sea captain in 1789, and was afterwards a merchant of
Boston. He, with his brother Appleton, was one of the first to introduce into New
England the art of printing calico,—producing a coarse blue and red article on India
cotton. Their place of business was at the corner of Buttolph Street. Captain
Prentiss'[cxlvi] residence was in a stone house, near the head of Hanover Street, the
former residence of Benjamin Hallowell, Comptroller of Customs, which was ransacked
at the time Gov. Hutchinson's House was mobbed. Member Massachusetts Lodge, 1789.