On October 14, 1774, the brigantine Peggy Stewart, owned by Annapolis merchant Anthony Stewart and named for his daughter, returned from England carrying European and East Indian goods, fifty-three indentured servants, and seventeen and a half chests of tea hidden in its hold, despite Stewart's agreement with other Maryland merchants not to import tea in protest of British taxes. The discovery of the tea provoked an angry crowd from Annapolis, Elk Ridge, and Baltimore Town, who mobbed Stewart's home on Hanover Street and threatened to hang him unless he burned his own vessel. On October 19, Stewart anchored the brigantine in the harbor and set it on fire with the tea still aboard. Stewart later left Maryland and settled in Nova Scotia. The destruction of the Peggy Stewart foreshadowed the Revolutionary War and also marked the decline of Annapolis as a major shipping port, as Baltimore's larger, deeper harbor and better access to the developing American interior helped it grow rapidly while Annapolis commerce changed slowly enough that many mid-eighteenth-century buildings survived.
