The paper would later be placed as stuffing in a chair and forgotten for the duration of most of the history of a nation that was not yet born.

More than 30 years ago Roy Stevenson, a local furniture upholsterer, was gingerly taking off the old and rotten cloth of an antique love chair. As the cloth fell away the stuffing was bared, revealing the yellowed paper of an old Boston newspaper.

The paper was filed away with other of Stevenson's effects, and when he died several years later became the property of his widow, now Mrs. H. E. Adams of Belwood St.

Yesterday, the paper, The Boston Gazette and Country Journal, hit the 200-year-old-mark; its fragile pages revealing a big chunk of Americana, and the week-old saga of five men dying in the snow of Boston in what would become known as the "Boston Massacre."

The paper, dated March 12, 1770 has since been pieced together with transparent tape. By its own description it is one that contains "The freshest advices, both foreign and domestic."

Front page news also revealed that in separate town meetings the people of Roxbury, Middlesex County and the town of Acton had voted to fight the import of foreign, particularly British, good.

The people of Acton, in a resolution, said, "We will not drink or purchase any foreign tea however imported."

The Boston Tea Party would not be a part of history for more than three years from that date, on December 16, 1773.

Page two and three of the crumbling paper tell of "The tragical affair on Monday last."

Some youths of Boston were confronted with a Redcoat and his companion in an alleyway. In an instant a British sword had slashed two of the young men. A scuffle followed and a crowd of local people came and chased the two back to the barracks of the 29th Regiment.

"In less than a minute 10 or 12 soldiers rushed from the barracks with cutlasses drawn."

Then near the commissioner's house the Gazette journalist said the soldiers pushed the crowd back, "pricking several" with bayonet blades. The angered band of Bostonians then began pelting the Redcoats with snowballs.

"On this the captain commanded them to fire, and more snowballs were coming, he again said, Damn you, fire, be the consequence what it will! Seven or eight, some say 11 guns were fired."

Three lay dead. Crispus Attucks, a mulatto, was the first to die, many said. Samuel Gray and James Caldwell died instantly in the barrage. Christopher Monk, 17, died the following morning and one more would die later. Six others were wounded.

A report of the funeral of four of the dead patriots described the attending crowd as probably the largest crowd to ever gather on the American continent on any occasion.

Advertisements of the day pushed cocoa, brimstone, garden seed, fruit trees, black salts, and an almanac.

Real estate in that day included a house located "across from the new courthouse."

A letter to the editor disclaimed a rumor circulating that accused him of producing clubs for British troops.