Tea Party Festival
In the spring of 1968 the citizens of Chestertown staged the first festival to commemorate the actions of their forefathers. The event that year was very small by current standards, but included a parade and historic staging of the events of the fateful day.
With a few years off, the Tea Party Festival has continued every Memorial Day Weekend in earnest since the Bicentennial year of 1976. The current incarnation is showcased by a large colonial parade down High Street, featuring numerous fife and drum bands as well as marching Colonial and British reenactors.
Local civic clubs offer indigenous cuisine (favorites include cold beer, hot corn, crab cakes and funnel cakes). Craftsmen from around the country ply their wares while musicians, puppeteers and dancers entertain the crowds of as many as 15,000 until the first day culminates with the throng gathering on the bank of the Chester River to cheer for the historic reenactment of the Storming of the Geddes. Colonial re-enactors use the schooner Sultana (a 1768 replica) and they are thrown overboard with the tea.
Other events at the annual event include a cocktail party, homegrown music, historic home tours, the tossing of a major town figure into the river, 10-mile and 5K runs, and a raft race.
It is the town's biggest weekend of the year as tourists and residents fill the streets strolling among booths filled with crafts and food and witnessing history.
Read more about this topic: Chestertown Tea Party
Famous quotes containing the words tea, party and/or festival:
“My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky;
It’s time to take the window to see Leerie going by;
For every night at tea-time and before you take your seat,
With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
“Good government cannot be found on the bargain-counter. We have seen samples of bargain-counter government in the past when low tax rates were secured by increasing the bonded debt for current expenses or refusing to keep our institutions up to the standard in repairs, extensions, equipment, and accommodations. I refuse, and the Republican Party refuses, to endorse that method of sham and shoddy economy.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme, I have tried; I can find no rhyme to “lady” but “baby”Man innocent rhyme; for “scorn,” “horn”Ma hard rhyme; for “school,” “fool”Ma babbling rhyme; very ominous endings. No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)