The Goodman kids in Laredo pulled out an old wooden box anytime they had show-and-tell at school. It was always sure to gather interest. The box, they claimed—with some good evidence backing them up—played an important role in the American Revolution.
Of course there were skeptics.
How could a box make it thousands of miles and two centuries from 18th century New England to 20th century South Texas? And how could a simple, old box have played a role in the Revolution?
The Goodmans brought the receipts, as is often said today.
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Helen Ford Waring, the Goodman children’s great-aunt, had tracked the box across generations of her family tree to determine who willed it to whom, where, when and how—even what they used it for.
It once was a nursery for a litter of kittens and was a cat box for some years. In another family, the box was used by a young girl as a doll house of sorts. The Goodmans had stored it under the dining room table for the primary purpose of being at the ready for show-and-tell.
The box had traveled across Texas, by inheritance, from Corpus Christi to San Antonio to Laredo.
Ford Waring did such a good job proving provenance that in 1976, the U.S. bicentennial, the Smithsonian Institution came calling. It sought artifacts to display during that significant anniversary of the Revolution and had heard about the box. Experts there did their own research, of course, decided the claims were legitimate and put it on display at the museum that year. They called it the Robinson Half Chest.
What is this box’s backstory? Ford Waring was able to prove that a great-great-great-ancestor of hers was up early one morning in December 1773, walking along the shore near Boston. His name was John Robinson.
He found a nice box made of half-inch-thick wood. Robinson had the reaction we all have, even in modern times, when we come across a well-made sturdy box: a shame to let that box go to waste. Ought to be good for something.
Besides, he knew it was a remnant from the night before, when patriots had sneaked aboard three ships and dumped some 340 boxes of tea from Britain’s East India Tea Company into the harbor—the Boston Tea Party. So he stashed it.
Many of the boxes floated out to sea or were destroyed on purpose. But this box survived and was passed down from generation to generation, state to state, until it resided for years near another shore, the Rio Grande.
In 2004, Andre Goodman heard that a Tea Party museum was being built in Boston. He felt that the Robinson Half Chest should have a proper home where more people could see it. He approached them and a deal was struck.
Today the box—the only one known from that famous tea party—has a place of honor in the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum. It has made a round-trip journey of thousands of miles over 250 years. It is now on the same docks where it was tossed into the sea so long ago—the place its journey began.
