Salem's Boston Tea Party Participants Honored With Plaques

SALEM, MA — Two participants of the Boston Tea Party, who are buried in Salem, will be honored with a commemorative marker noting their involvement in the seminal Revolutionary War event on Wednesday.

The Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum, in partnership with the city of Salem and Revolution 250, will honor William Russell and Rev. Dr. John Prince in separate ceremonies at the Broad Street and Harmony Grove cemeteries.

Russell was born in Boston in 1748 and was a member of the St. Andrew's Lodge of Freemasons. After the Boston Team Party, he was a sergeant major in the Rhode Island Campaign of the Revolutionary War.

British soldiers twice captured Russell, then released both times. He died in Cambridge in 1784 and was buried in Salem where his son is believed to have resided.

Rev. Dr. John Prince was born in Boston in 1751 and studied divinity at Harvard College. He was ordained in 1779 and became pastor at the First Church in Salem where he lived until his death in 1836.

While Prince claimed he was not part of the Boston Tea Party, was on several lists as having participated in the event, and informed the media of the time of the destruction of tea.

The image on the commemorative marker is inspired by Nathaniel Currier's The Destruction of the Tea at Boston Harbor lithograph created in 1846.

The ceremonies will take place at 11 a.m. at Harmony Grove for Russell and 2 p.m. at Broad Street for Prince.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)