Editing Chestertown, Maryland (section)

=== Chestertown Tea Party Festival ===
{{Unreferenced section|date=December 2024}}
In May 1774, five months after the British closing the port of Boston after the [[Boston Tea Party]], the citizens of Chestertown wrote a set of resolves that prohibited the buying, selling, or drinking of tea. Based on these resolutions, a popular legend has it that the citizens held their own "tea party" on the [[Chester River]] in an act of colonial defiance.

The Chestertown Tea Party Festival celebrates Chestertown's colonial heritage with a weekend of events on Memorial Day weekend, including a re-enactment of the legendary "tea party." A parade begins the festival, marching down High Street to the Chester River, and then follows with colonial music and dance, fife and drum performances, puppet shows, colonial crafts demonstrations and sales, military drills, and a walking tour of the historic district.  In the afternoon, re-enactors, playing the part of angry citizens and Continental Soldiers, march to the docks where redcoats (played by members of the Maryland Loyalist Battalion) defend the ship for a short skirmish, then retire.  The ship, the schooner ''Sultana'', is then boarded by the angry citizens, and the tea is thrown into the Chester River.