One of the biggest myths about the Boston Tea Party revealed by historian

Dana Perino introduces Douglas Kennedy's compelling report on America's historic taverns, emphasizing their pivotal role during the 1776 Revolution. Kennedy tours significant establishments in New York and Boston, including Fraunces Tavern and Green Dragon, where revolutionaries like George Washington and Sam Adams gathered to plan independence. The segment explores how these pubs served as vital social anchors for political and military developments.

When Americans think of the beverage that fueled the American Revolution, they usually picture black tea — but it turns out that green tea was just as popular.

The Founding Fathers and their contemporaries drank both types of tea, Bruce Richardson, the Kentucky-based founder of Elmwood Inn Fine Teas, told Fox News Digital.

British subjects "were as likely to be drinking green tea as black tea, whether you were in Jane Austen [era] England ... or you were in colonial Boston," he added.

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"There were five teas, all from China, because that was the only country that was exporting tea," Richardson said. "And of those five different teas, two of them were green and three of them were black."

Black tea may dominate popular images of colonial America, but historians say green tea was just as common before the Revolution. (iStock; PHAS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Richardson, a tea historian who works as the tea master at the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum, said the five types of tea dumped into Boston Harbor in protest of the Tea Act of 1773 included three black varieties — Bohea, Souchong and Congou — as well as the green teas Hyson and Singlo.

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Bohea, the most common and least expensive black tea of the era, was often made from older tea leaves harvested after the highest-quality leaves of the season had already been picked.

Most of the tea dumped into Boston Harbor was Bohea, Richardson said — and it was so ubiquitous that he compared it to the way Kleenex has become synonymous with tissues today.

The Boston Tea Party targeted shipments containing five different tea varieties, including two green teas and three black teas. (iStock; Bettmann via Getty Images)

"It was so common that often teapots at the time, or some that I've seen, would say Bohea on the side of the teapot," he said. "If they wanted tea, they'd say, 'I'll have a cup of Bohea.' It was that common."

Not only did colonial Americans distinguish between green and black tea, they even stored them differently.

"They still wanted their tea time, but they didn't want to support the British government."

"The well-to-do people would have a tea caddy – a wooden, beautifully made tea caddy to store their tea in," he said.

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"It was kept under lock and key. And in that tea caddy, [there] would be two compartments, one for green tea and one for black tea."

Merchants often favored black tea because it held up better during the long voyage from China to Europe and onward to the American colonies, Richardson said.

Growing opposition to British policies did little to diminish Americans' fondness for tea and the traditions surrounding it. (Stock Montage/Getty Images)

"The green tea was what China had always drunk," he said.

"And so they were exporting that as well, but they found that the black tea actually made the voyage better than the green teas."

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Even after many colonists swore off British tea, they kept the ritual of drinking it — or at least a close substitute.

Even after boycotting British goods, many patriots continued tea-drinking traditions with homemade substitutes known as "Liberty Teas." (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Many patriots brewed so-called "Liberty Teas" made from ingredients such as dried apples, blueberries, chamomile and herbs grown in their gardens.

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"They still wanted their tea time, but they didn't want to support the British government," Richardson said.

Andrea Margolis is a lifestyle reporter for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. Readers can follow her on X at @andreamargs or send story tips to andrea.margolis@fox.com.

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