The Chestertown Tea Party was a protest against British excise duties which, according to local legend, took place in May 1774 in Chestertown, Maryland as a response to the British Tea Act. Chestertown tradition holds that, following the example of the more famous Boston Tea Party, colonial patriots boarded the brigantine Geddes in broad daylight and threw its cargo of tea into the Chester River. The event is celebrated each Memorial Day weekend with a festival and historic reenactment called the Chestertown Tea Party Festival. Background Relations with England In 1767 in an effort to raise money for England by taxing the thirteen colonies, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, as part of a series of other acts, including the Sugar Act, Stamp Act, and Coercive Acts. The Townshend Acts placed taxes on several important items in the Colonial economy including paper, paint, lead, glass and tea. Reaction to the Townshend Acts in the thirteen colonies was so negative that on March 5, 1770, Parliament decided to repeal most of the duties, however, they decided that the tax on tea would remain. As a result, many colonists refused to buy (boycotted) tea that came to America from England. Instead they smuggled in tea from other countries or made their own tea from local spices. Soon merchants in England began to lose money, especially the East India Company. In order to keep this company from going bankrupt, Parliament passed the Tea Act of 1773. For reasons of economics and social liberty, the colonists were outraged and the seeds of dissent began to grow in the New World. Beginnings in Boston On December 16, 1773, a group of angry rebels calling themselves the "Sons of Liberty" protested the Tea Act and disguised as Mohawk natives boarded three ships in Boston Harbor loaded with tea and proceeded to dump 92,000 pounds of tea into the ocean. King George III reacted to the "tea party" by ordering the closing of the port of Boston. While Boston's was by far the most famous tea party that occurred in the colonies, it was only the first of many protests against the Tea Act that took place along the Atlantic Coast. Events in Chestertown When news of the closing of the port of Boston reached the Chesapeake Bay port of Chester Town, (now Chestertown) on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in the spring of 1774, town leaders called