Before leaving Boston after 18 years, I spent one final afternoon in the Granary Burying Ground, on Tremont Street, just up from the Park Street T station. Among the monuments to Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and the victims of the Boston Massacre, one name caught my attention: Christopher Seider.
Few visitors recognize his name today. Yet in the winter of 1770, Christopher Seider’s death was one of the most talked-about events in Boston, drawing thousands of mourners and becoming a rallying point for colonial resistance.
That contrast is all the more striking because even basic details about him remain uncertain…