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Like many of his neighbors, Elijah Williams was a tea drinker. Tea was relatively rare in the early 1700s, but by the time of the American Revolution, Americans were confirmed tea drinkers. Coffee did not achieve comparable popularity until the Civil War era. The tea canister Elijah purchased at a Deerfield, Massachusetts, store in 1803 probably looked similar to this one. It cost only two cents less than the forty-four cents he paid for half a pound of Souchong tea to put in it.

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