(1740-1835)
"Mother of the Boston Tea Party." Sarah Fulton is credited with having helped to organize the protest against the Tea Act, which took place in 1773. Born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1740, the fourth daughter of twelve children of Samuel Bradlee and Mary Andrews, Sarah Bradlee married John Fulton in 1762. While the couple was visiting her brother Nathaniel in Boston in December 1773, Fulton and her husband participated in the Tea Party. Participants in the event, who included Sarah’s husband and four of her brothers, met at her brother’s home. Mrs. Fulton and her sister in law painted the men’s faces and put feathers in their hair to resemble Mohawk Indians. The women also welcomed the party back into the Bradlee home after they had dumped tea into Boston Harbor, helped them to clean paint off their faces and destroyed evidence of their activities. Fulton later served as a nurse during the siege of Boston and secretly carried a message to George Washington who was waiting outside the city. The mother of ten children, Fulton died in 1835.
