Bump.
Follow up column:
Don’t shortchange historic importance of tea
12/28/2005
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Column By Carl Barbati
TRENTON--If you listened to historian Stacy Roth yesterday afternoon, you might think the whole world revolves around tea.
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That’s right, tea.
At the very least, Roth makes a good case for tea’s importance in the birth of our nation, going back to a little "party" in Boston Harbor circa 1773.
"Imagine," she said, "the destruction of a beverage led to revolution."
Wearing a Colonial outfit, Roth entertained a sold-out crowd in the Mercer Room of the Trenton Marriott with songs, stories and tastings as part of Patriots’ Week, a six-day celebration of the city’s pivotal role in the American Revolution.
Of course, everyone’s heard about the Boston Tea Party, but how many of us knew that similar anti-tea demonstrations took place soon after? One such event took place in downtown Princeton, as supplies of tea were burned in protest over England’s latest tax on the colonists.
But what was it about tea that made it so important in the late 18th Century?
That was at the crux of Roth’s presentation.
While the Chinese had been drinking tea for hundreds of years, Westerners from Portugal and Holland first acquired it from China in the 1600s, but it was a rare delicacy that might have cost an average worker two months’ salary to buy a pound.
Tea leaves made it to England when the monarchy returned in 1660. The exiled King Charles II had been living in Holland and his wife was Portuguese royalty.
So, tea instantly became the beverage in Britain, and, as more and more was imported from China, the price dropped to make it available for one and all.
The serving and drinking of tea became a status symbol in the 1700s and a woman might be judged by how she set her tea table and how she handled the developing social etiquette of serving and drinking the beverage.
It became a mark of social standing, not to mention the fact that men and women both liked the taste.
Roth had put three kinds of tea--black, green and shotgun--on all the tables and guests got the chance to try brewing their own and holding their teacups in any of the socially acceptable manners of the time.
And, she said, it’s easy to know how families of the late 1700s and early 1800s set their tea tables because many families posed for their portraits around the tea service.
During the American Revolution, she said, colonists had about a dozen types of tea available, and General Washington was known to be a huge consumer of the stuff.
He especially hated any dinner party or social function where he considered the tea too weak.
"There was no crime worse than weak tea," Roth said. "Washington loved his tea and if anyone served him weak tea he would note it in his journal."
So, there it is-- father of our country, statesman and tea snob.