Revolutionary discovery
Harvard archivists have made what they call “a Revolutionary discovery” in the stacks at Houghton Library. Karen Nipps, head of the Rare Book Cataloging Team, came across eight “subscription sheets,” signed petitions dated “Boston, October 28, 1767.” The documents record one of the early calls for Colonial Americans to boycott British goods. The British had just imposed the Townsend Acts, requiring heavy tariffs on British goods. Six years later, the same tensions sparked the famed Boston Tea Party. Civil actions like these foreshadowed the American Revolution. In 1767, the signers pledged not to buy goods imported from Britain and its other colonies after Dec. 31. The list of boycotted articles opens a window on 18th-century American imports, including furniture, loaf sugar, nails, anchors, hats, shoe leather, linseed oil, glue, malt liquors, starch, gauze, and the dress gloves worn at funerals. Historians had known about the boycott, which was called a “nonimportation agreement.” Records...