There was an historic tea-party also in that town of so much importance in those days--Edenton, N. C. On October 25, 1774, fifty-one spirited dames assembled at the residence of Mrs. Elizabeth King, and passed resolutions commending the action of the Provincial Congress, and declared also that they would not conform to “that Pernicious Custom of Drinking Tea or that the aforesaid Ladys would not promote ye wear of any manufacture from England,” until the tax was repealed. The notice of the association is contained in the American Archives, and runs thus:-- Association Signed by Ladies of Edenton, North Carolina, Oct. 25, 1774. As we cannot be indifferent on any occasion that appears to affect the peace and happiness of our country, and as it has been thought necessary for the publick good to enter into several particular resolves, by meeting of Members of Deputies from the whole Province, it is a duty that we owe not only to our near and dear relations and connections, but to ourselves who are essentially interested in their welfare, to do everything as far as lies in our power to testify our sincere adherence to the same, and we do therefore accordingly subscribe this paper as a witness of our fixed intentions and solemn determination to do so. Signed by fifty one ladies. It is a good example of the strange notions which some historians have of the slight value of circumstantial evidence in history, that the names of these fifty-one ladies have not been preserved. A few, however, are known. The president was Mrs. Penelope Barker, who was thrice a widow, of husbands Hodgson, Crumm, and Barker. She was high-spirited, and from her varied matrimonial experiences knew that it was needless to be afraid of any man; so when British soldiers invaded her stables to seize her carriage horses, she snatched the sword of one of her husbands from the wall, with a single blow severed the reins in the British officer’s hands, and drove her horses back into the stables, and kept them too. The fame of this Southern tea-party reached England, for Arthur Iredell wrote (with the usual masculine jocularity upon feminine enterprises) thus, on January 31, 1775, from London to his patriot brother, James Iredell:--