Chestertown Tea Party - Tea Party Festival

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:

    They were right. The Soviet régime is not the embodiment of evil as you think in the West. They have laws and I broke them. I hate tea and they love tea. Who is wrong?
    Alexander Zinoviev (b. 1922)

    In making the great experiment of governing people by consent rather than by coercion, it is not sufficient that the party in power should have a majority. It is just as necessary that the party in power should never outrage the minority.
    Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)

    The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.
    Germaine Greer (b. 1939)