Christopher Seider is shot to death, January 22nd, 1770
The flame that would ignite the American Revolution is lit when, according to the Boston Gazette, “a barbarous murder . . . was committed on the body of a young lad of about eleven years of age.” Christopher Seider and a crowd of young men had marched defiantly through Boston’s cobblestoned streets. Ebenezer Richardson, the greatly despised customs collector, tried to stop them. Forced to retreat to his home, a crowd of about sixty boys hurled rubbish and rocks. When an egg or a rock struck his wife, Richardson appeared at a window, brandishing a musket. He fires once. Christopher Seider is killed.