Christopher Seider (also sometimes Snider), was the first American killed in the political strife that later became the American Revolution. He died in Boston on February 22, 1770.[1][2] His funeral became a major political event, and his killing heightened tensions that erupted into the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770.
Seider was the son of poor German immigrants. On February 22, 1770, he joined a crowd mobbing the house of Ebenezer Richardson located in the North End, Boston.[2] Richardson was a customs service employee who had tried to disperse the boys' protest in front of a shop selling goods from Britain. The young crowd, joined by some adults, threw stones which broke Richardson's windows and struck his wife. Richardson tried to scare them by firing a gun into the crowd.[2] Seider was wounded in the arm and the chest, and died that evening.[2] Samuel Adams arranged for the funeral, which over 2,000 people attended. Seider was buried at the Granary Burying Ground, where the victims of the Boston Massacre were also buried.[2]
This killing and Seider's large public funeral fueled public outrage that reached a peak in the Boston Massacre eleven days later. Richardson was convicted of murder that spring, but received a royal pardon and a new job within the customs service, on the grounds that he had acted in self-defense; this became a major American grievance against the British government. Seider's death was thus one event that led to the American Revolution, and some historians have called him the first victim of that conflict.