Granary Burial Ground - Christopher Seider

Here is where three signers of the American Declaration of Independence were buried as well as Paul Revere, Mary Goose (credited with being Mother Goose), and the parents and siblings of Benjamin Franklin. It’s estimated there are over 5,000 bodies buried there but only about 2,345 headstones. It’s Boston’s 3rd oldest cemetery.

Christopher Seider – He was 10 years old, almost 11, when he died 11 days before the Boston Massacre. He was known as the first martyr to the American Revolution but generally forgotten after the news of the Massacre was sensationalized. There are three errors about the gravestone.

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During the winter of 1769-1770, groups of citizens harassed the soldiers at every opportunity, pelting them with snowballs, and engaging off duty soldiers in fistfights. In this period of increasing mob hostility and divided loyalties, a local Boston merchant, Theophilus Lillie ignored the call for a boycott of British taxed goods, publicly announcing this in a letter to the Boston Chronicle.

The patriots responded by placing an effigy of him marked “Importer” outside his North End store, to warn other citizens that Lillie was a loyalist and not to purchase from him. On Feb 22, 1770, customs officer Ebenezer Richardson, also a loyalist, attempted to destroy the effigy, and a mob quickly gathered to stop him. Throwing rocks, the crowd hit Lillie’s wife through a broken window and drove Richardson back to his house, and when they began to storm the house to wreck it, Richardson fired several shots at random from his window. The first shot was unloaded to disperse the crowd, but when that didn’t work, he loaded his rifle with “swan shot” or pea-sized lead balls. This hit Christopher Snider in the chest and wounded several others including a teenager named Samuel Gore. Richardson was rescued from the mob and taken into custody by a squad of British soldiers responding to the sounds of the gunshots. He was convicted and imprisoned for a time before being pardoned by the King for acting in self-defense then sent to Pennsylvania and ultimately returned back to England. That pardon only angered colonists.

Snider was buried following an elaborate funeral parade from the Liberty Tree to the cemetery, during which angry protest speeches were made, demanding revenge for young Snider's death. Differing accounts report a crowd of 1,000 or 2,000 individuals attended. Snider's death was overshadowed 11 days later with the Boston Massacre. The original gravestone wore down and was replaced.

The gravestone says Christopher “Snider”, that he died at 12, and that he’s buried in that location – however many corpses were removed in the 1800s and remaining headstones were reportedly moved in 1906 (due to the invention of the lawn mower) so no one could be fully sure exactly where anybody lay buried. The family name was spelled Seider in most legal records (but also by Sider, Siders, Syder, and Snider). The Boston Chronicle (Loyalist) reported he was 14 where Anti-Crown papers reported he was 11. According to church baptismal records Christopher Seider was baptized in Braintree on 18 March 1759 so he was most likely born in the first week of March 1759 then shot and killed on Feb 22, 1770. He was likely still 10 years old, just a little shy of being 11.

What made such a young boy interested in the mob riots of the area? His parents were poor sending him off to be a live-in enslaved worker to a loyalist wealthy widow named Madam Apthorp. Depending on his terms as a servant, he was likely a student. It’s possible he was getting out of school and spontaneously joined in the protests but there’s no record of him attending a formal school. He was literate as some “heroic pieces” of writings were found in his pocket.

Whether he was caught up in the drama of a riot, or actively interested in freeing America and becoming a ‘hero’, either way he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, hanging out in the wrong crowd, and right at the forefront of the action to take the shot to the chest.

-Source Links-

Interesting graves with descriptions - https://theclio.com/entry/22758

https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=318&pid=2 4 newspaper pages

https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2006/05/christopher-seider-shooting-victim.html

https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2006/06/christopher-seider-household-servant.html

https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/christopher-seider-the-first-casualty-in-the-american-revolutionary-cause/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6910/christopher-snider