These two bullets were collected from the home of Edward Payne, a merchant who lived above his business on King Street. On the evening of 5 March 1770, Payne was standing at the front door of his house, just across the street from the Custom House. He had heard the town bells ringing and, when he went outside to see what was happening, saw and heard the commotion in the street. As he later testified in a deposition published in A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston...:

he was soon joined by Mr. George Bethune, and Mr. Harrison Gray, that the people round the centinel were then crying out Fire, Fire, damn you why don't you Fire, soon after, he perceived a number of soldiers coming down towards the centinel, with their arms in a horizontal posture, and their bayonets fixed, who turned the people from before the custom-house, and drew up before the door, the people, who still remained in the street and about the soldiers, continued calling out to them to fire. In this situation they remained some minutes, when he heard a gun snap, and presently a single gun fired, and soon after several others went off one after another, to the number of three or four, and then heard the rammers go into the guns as tho' they were loading; immediately after which three or four more went off in the same manner; at which time a ball pass'd through the deponent's right arm, upon which he immediately retired into the house.