Bottle containing the tea Thomas Melvill found in his boots after the Boston Tea Party in 1773.
The Tea Party participants went to great lengths to ensure no one kept any of the precious tea. When Melvill returned to his home he discovered there were tea leaves in his boots, and so he placed the leaves in a vial and surreptitiously held them for the remainder of his life. Handed down in the Melvill family, the leaves were donated to Boston's Old State House Museum in 1899 by a descendent, Miss Mary Melvill.