ABSTRACT
The Boston Gazette account of Christopher Seider death on February 22, 1770 turned him into a martyr. He appears to have been the eleven- or twelve-year-old son of working-class German immigrants in Boston. Ebenezer Richardson impetuously—and dangerously—drew attention to himself by trying to disrupt the proceedings; the crowd of mostly boys followed him to his house. Dragged out of his house by angry adults who had joined with the boys in the crowd, Richardson was lucky that he and George Wilmot, who had taken shelter with him, were not lynched. Seider’s funeral became a public occasion, anticipating the even more dramatic display less than two weeks later with the massacre funeral. Seider’s death and Richardson’s drawn-out legal fate played a significant part in the political unrest that troubled Boston.
