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As students in United States schools are taught, opposition to the Tea Act passed by the parliament of Great Britain escalated hostilities between Britain and American colonists, a precursor to the Revolutionary War. On December 16, 1773, seven months after royal assent of the act, 16 members of the loosely organized Sons of Liberty, disguised as Native Americans, threw 342 chests of imported tea from a docked ship into Boston Harbor. “No taxation without representation,” they cried. (This will be on the exam.)
However, the Boston Tea Party (as it came to be known) was only the first and most famous response to the Tea Act. Other documented resistance occurred in Charleston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere along the East Coast. The last and least known protest occurred on December 22, 1774 in Greenwich, New Jersey. East India Company tea, originally bound for Philadelphia and entrusted to a British loyalist in Greenwich, was confiscated and burned.
The revolutionary action in Greenwich (pronounced green-witch) has been a source of local pride ever since. At the centennial of the event, that pride began to focus on a proposal to erect a monument remembering the Greenwich conflagration.
It took several decades to secure funding, but the granite monument was completed in 1908 and is now the centerpiece of the hamlet. The classical façade consists of a carved inscription and drape, separated by a bronze relief illustrating the tea burning, and flanked by Corinthian pilasters. The 23 names in raised letters on the sides are those recalled and collected in the 1830s by Dr. Ebenezer Elmer, who himself took part in the event. However, Jonathan Wood, a former president of the Cumberland County Historical Society, has stated without reservation that some of the listed people “absolutely did not participate.”
The factual error is understandable. Elmer was in his 80s when he collated the list of participants, recollecting an event that occurred six decades earlier. His age notwithstanding, Elmer was duly respected as a source. He was a surgeon in the Revolutionary War and a Brigadier General during the War of 1812. Elmer served in the New Jersey state assembly and senate, as well as the United States House of Representatives. He wasn’t some old coot.
Further, the raid took place at night and the men were disguised. The disguises themselves are another matter of dispute. Oral history has it that the Greenwich raiders wore Native American costumes and reenactors have followed suit. However, a contemporary diary account says only, “Last night the tea was, by a number of persons in disguise, taken out of the house and consumed with fire.” Disguised how is not recorded. Has the oral history evolved so that what occurred in Greenwich replicates what happened a year earlier in Boston?
The tea burning took place after a meeting of prominent citizens at the Shiloh home of twin brothers Richard and Lewis Howell. The Howells and others would be sued for the theft but with the shift in political sympathies, not indicted for the crime. Richard Howell would go on to be governor of New Jersey from 1793 to 1802 and to an earlier point, neither he nor his brother are named on the monument.
Other than the diary entry, there is only one other contemporary report, a brief account in a Philadelphia newspaper. The oral histories, later reified as fact, are controvertible. Who participated? How were they disguised? Was the tea seized from the loyalist’s cellar or from a shed? Was it taken to a field to be burned, or the market square, near where the monument now stands? Are some of the finer points merely semantic, a difference only in terminology?
What can be said for certain is that 16 months before the beginning of the Revolutionary War, residents of Cumberland County expressed their displeasure with British taxation by burning a cargo of tea and the historic event is a source of local pride, evidenced by a handsome monument in the township of Greenwich.
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As students in United States schools are taught, opposition to the Tea Act passed by the parliament of Great Britain escalated hostilities between Britain and American colonists, a precursor to the Revolutionary War. On December 16, 1773, seven months after royal assent of the act, 16 members of the loosely organized Sons of Liberty, disguised as Native Americans, threw 342 chests of imported tea from a docked ship into Boston Harbor. “No taxation without representation,” they cried. (This will be on the exam.)
However, the Boston Tea Party (as it came to be known) was only the first and most famous response to the Tea Act. Other documented resistance occurred in Charleston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere along the East Coast. The last and least known protest occurred on December 22, 1774 in Greenwich, New Jersey. East India Company tea, originally bound for Philadelphia and entrusted to a British loyalist in Greenwich, was confiscated and burned.
The revolutionary action in Greenwich (pronounced green-witch) has been a source of local pride ever since. At the centennial of the event, that pride began to focus on a proposal to erect a monument remembering the Greenwich conflagration.
It took several decades to secure funding, but the granite monument was completed in 1908 and is now the centerpiece of the hamlet. The classical façade consists of a carved inscription and drape, separated by a bronze relief illustrating the tea burning, and flanked by Corinthian pilasters. The 23 names in raised letters on the sides are those recalled and collected in the 1830s by Dr. Ebenezer Elmer, who himself took part in the event. However, Jonathan Wood, a former president of the Cumberland County Historical Society, has stated without reservation that some of the listed people “absolutely did not participate.”
The factual error is understandable. Elmer was in his 80s when he collated the list of participants, recollecting an event that occurred six decades earlier. His age notwithstanding, Elmer was duly respected as a source. He was a surgeon in the Revolutionary War and a Brigadier General during the War of 1812. Elmer served in the New Jersey state assembly and senate, as well as the United States House of Representatives. He wasn’t some old coot.
Further, the raid took place at night and the men were disguised. The disguises themselves are another matter of dispute. Oral history has it that the Greenwich raiders wore Native American costumes and reenactors have followed suit. However, a contemporary diary account says only, “Last night the tea was, by a number of persons in disguise, taken out of the house and consumed with fire.” Disguised how is not recorded. Has the oral history evolved so that what occurred in Greenwich replicates what happened a year earlier in Boston?
The tea burning took place after a meeting of prominent citizens at the Shiloh home of twin brothers Richard and Lewis Howell. The Howells and others would be sued for the theft but with the shift in political sympathies, not indicted for the crime. Richard Howell would go on to be governor of New Jersey from 1793 to 1802 and to an earlier point, neither he nor his brother are named on the monument.
Other than the diary entry, there is only one other contemporary report, a brief account in a Philadelphia newspaper. The oral histories, later reified as fact, are controvertible. Who participated? How were they disguised? Was the tea seized from the loyalist’s cellar or from a shed? Was it taken to a field to be burned, or the market square, near where the monument now stands? Are some of the finer points merely semantic, a difference only in terminology?
What can be said for certain is that 16 months before the beginning of the Revolutionary War, residents of Cumberland County expressed their displeasure with British taxation by burning a cargo of tea and the historic event is a source of local pride, evidenced by a handsome monument in the township of Greenwich.
otw_news_feedEvery month in OTW Signal, we take a look at stories that connect to the OTW’s mission and projects, including issues related to legal matters, technology, academia, fannish history and preservation issues of fandom, fan culture, and transformative works.
Why some people are devoted to particular aspects of popular culture is a fundamental query in fan studies research. One common and familiar answer is that fandoms are like religions. A recent article offers a different approach to understanding the emotional intensity of fan devotion, suggesting that while fans often describe their devotion in terms that sound religious, this comparison “has some lingering issues that hamper the field.” The authors contend that we can compare specific elements of fan experience (e.g., rituals, symbols, shared practices, and collective identity) to “sacred experiences” without needing to imply that fandoms are literal religions.
We believe it is more accurate to conceptualize fan devotion as part of a broader landscape of sacred activities that transcend the concept of religion.
Elliott and Mowers assert that their results provide powerful evidence that many fans experience their interests as sacred.
Their interests occupy a unique and special place in their lives: They derive purpose and inspiration from them, they learn important values from them, they involve something powerful and important, and they inspire them to believe in something larger than themselves.
To support this claim, the researchers analyzed information gathered from surveys, interviews, and fan experiences at Comic Cons and identified a new framework for determining what makes fan experiences sacred-like. They argue that by studying and measuring these “sacred dimensions,” especially in contexts like conventions where fan devotion takes on almost ritual-like patterns, scholars can reevaluate the religion metaphor, focusing instead on analytic models that consider the complexity of fan experience. Through this process, researchers can better understand fan devotion and how fandom is shaped by this collective identity. This analysis helps frame fandom as a cultural practice with emotional, symbolic, and communal depth.
Reports from fan conventions across the globe reinforce the idea that physical gatherings become collective spaces where fans create meaning through shared experiences. In one example, recent reporting on Bengaluru Comic Con highlights the convergence of more than 50,000 fans gathering to celebrate their shared love for fandom. A Times of India article describes fans coming together in a vibrant pop culture playground: cosplaying, celebrating shared passions, and building community through creative expression. “For many attendees, Comic Con was as much about community as it was about pop culture.” In another report, Shefali Johnson, CEO of Comic Con India, explains how the fans are what make Bengaluru Comic Con so special: “People here come to listen, learn, connect and experience.” A story in the Deccan Herald describes the con as “a living mosaic of fandom,” where participation is an act of joy:
For many, the message was simple: this space belongs to everyone, regardless of age, fandom, or experience.
Events like these allow fans from all over the world to connect and share their passions, creating new sacred experiences together and building a strong collective identity.
Transformative Works and Cultures, a project of the OTW, is an international, peer-reviewed academic journal that seeks to promote scholarship on fanworks and practices. The journal is published at least twice each year and invites submissions of papers in all areas. For more information, visit the TWC website.
Did you know the OTW attends fan conventions? Our volunteers represent the OTW at cons around the world. The OTW’s Con Outreach team, a division of the Communications committee, coordinated attendance at 10 gatherings across three continents in 2025, meeting fans and sharing games, gifts, fic prompts, and of course, our popular rec board, where everyone is invited to take a fic rec and leave one of their own. Our volunteers love to talk about fandom, so come see us and say hello!
Would you like to see the OTW at your local fan convention event? Contact our Communications committee and let us know!
We want your suggestions for the next OTW Signal post! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or news story you think we should know about, send us a link. We are looking for content in all languages! Submitting a link doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in an OTW post, and inclusion of a link doesn’t mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.
runpunkrun posting in gluten_freeoursinLast week's bread held out adequately.
On Wednesday I made Angel Biscuit dough (this year I had active dried yeast) which was enough to provide for Christmas, Boxing Day and Saturday morning breakfast. Turned out rather well.
For Christmas dinner we had: starter of steamed asparagus with halved hardboiled quails' eggs and salmon caviar; followed by pheasant pot-roasted with bacon, brandy, and madeira and served with Ruby Gem potatoes roasted in goosefat, garlic-roasted tenderstem broccoli (as noted with previous recent tenderstem broccoli, wish to invoke Trades Description Act re actual tenderness of stem), and red cabbage (bought-in, as not only is it an Almighty Faff, making it from scratch would involve ending up with A Hell of A Lot of Red Cabbage). Then bought-in Christmas puds with brandy butter and clotted cream.
Boxing Day lunch: blinis with smoked salmon, smoked Loch trout, and the remaining salmon caviar, and creme fraiche with horseradish cream, and a salad of lamb's lettuce and grilled piccarello pepper strips, in a walnut oil and damson vinegar dressing. Followed by mince pies.
Yesterday lunch was the leftover blinis and smoked fish. For yesterday evening meal I made the remains of the pheasant into a pilaff, served with a green salad.
Today's lunch: chestnut mushrooms quartered in olive oil, white-braised green beans and cut up piccarello peppers, the Phul-Gobi (braised cauliflower) from Dharamjit Singh's Indian Cookery, and blinis made up from the last of the batter, a bit past its best.
highlander_ii in fan_flashworks - School : BtVS : icons : SHSluzula - Write every day: Day 28pairatime in smallfandomfest - Fanfic: Defying Gravity (1997 Movie); Griff/Pete; Event of the movie as seen from the point of viewgoodbyebird - and mid the shadowy throng.shipperslist - The Husky and His White Cat Shizun by Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou, book 9trobadora in sid_guardian - Picspam/Quiz: Handsseascribble - MEDIA POST: the real treasure was the government funded hockey yaoi we watched along the waylydamorehouse - Solo RPG - The Bird Oraclecase in fandomsecrets - [ SECRET POST #6932 ]osprey_archer - Conclavebluapapilio - Game Check-in: Duet Night Abyssshipperslist - Snowflake Challenge 2026!vriddy - New K-9 fic: Making choices (Ren/Oboro/Fujimaru/Kagari)atlas_obscura_places_feed - Greenwich Tea Burning Monument in Greenwich, New Jerseyatlasobscura_feed - Greenwich Tea Burning Monument in Greenwich, New Jerseyotw_news_feed - OTW Signal, December 2025tjs_whatnot - Who's Ready?!runpunkrun in gluten_free - New Tag: yeast-free!oursin - Culinarylina_trinch in killthecake - [75] Cloudy Navtimeasmymeasure
