Answer:
A relic of actual tea from the Boston Tea Party.
Step-by-step explanation:
Thomas Melville was part of the famous political protest, the Boston Tea Party where vast chests of imported tea were dumped into the sea. This was the American colony's way of protesting against the British's policy of "taxation without representation."
On the night of the event, after they had dumped all of the crates of tea into the sea, Melville returned home. There, he discovered that there were some of the very tea that they had dumped, stuck to his boot. He kept that and then, it later became a relic and has been housed at the Old State House to this day.