The Isaac Royall House is a historic house located in

Medford, Massachusetts Medford is a city northwest of downtown Boston on the Mystic River in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. At the time of the 2020 U.S. Census, Medford's population was 59,659. It is home to Tufts University, which has its campus alo ...

, near Tufts University. The historic estate was founded by Bay Colony native Isaac Royall and is recognized as giving a face and life to the history and existence of slave quarters and slavery in Massachusetts. It is a National Historic Landmark, operated as a non-profit museum, and open for public visits between June 1 and the last weekend in October. The Royall House is notable for its excellent preservation, its possession of the only surviving

slave Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

quarters in Massachusetts, and its American Revolution associations with General John Stark, Molly Stark, and General

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of th ...

. Among the historic objects on display is a tea box, said to be from the same batch that was dumped into Boston Harbor on the night of December 16, 1773, and a very small painting by

John Singleton Copley John Singleton Copley (July 3, 1738 – September 9, 1815) was an Anglo-American painter, active in both colonial America and England. He was probably born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, both Anglo-Irish. Afte ...

Isaac Royall Jr. Isaac Royall Jr. (1719–1781) was the largest slaveholder in 18th-century Massachusetts. His wealth, primarily accrued through enslaved labor in Antigua, made possible the creation of Harvard Law School. Royall and his father enslaved 64 people o ...

The Royalls were the largest slave holding family in Massachusetts history.

Origins

Governor John Winthrop received the property as a land grant in 1631, but there is no evidence that he built a house in this location. The core of the present-day mansion was built about 1692, during the ownership of Elizabeth Lidgett. It was an imposing brick structure standing 2½ stories high and one room in depth, with exceedingly thick walls. On December 26, 1732, Isaac Royall Sr., a slave trader, rum distiller, and wealthy merchant of Antigua, purchased the house and 504 acres (2 km²) of land along the west bank of the Mystic River in what was then Charlestown, an area annexed to Medford in 1754. He remodeled the house extensively between 1733 and 1737, adding a third story, encasing the east facade in clapboard, and ornamenting the exterior with architectural details and continuous strips of spandrel panels. Royall also constructed outbuildings in 1732, including the only known freestanding slave quarters that survive in New England. After this construction, Royall brought 27 enslaved Africans from

Antigua Antigua ( ), also known as Waladli or Wadadli by the native population, is an island in the Lesser Antilles. It is one of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean region and the main island of the country of Antigua and Barbuda. Antigua and Bar ...

, which doubled the enslaved population of the community.

Early history

(1719–1781) came into its possession of the property in 1739 following the death of his father. He greatly enlarged it between 1747 and 1750. He more than doubled the depth of the main building, greatly extended the brick end walls correspondingly, and at either end of the house constructed great twin chimneys connected by parapets. Other features he added include the false

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...

siding on the new western facade and great

Doric Doric may refer to: * Doric, of or relating to the Dorians of ancient Greece ** Doric Greek, the dialects of the Dorians * Doric order, a style of ancient Greek architecture * Doric mode, a synonym of Dorian mode * Doric dialect (Scotland) * Doric ...

pilasters inserted at the corners. The interior was redone in Georgian wooden paneling, trim, and archways of a quality possibly unsurpassed by any surviving house of the period. Several of the major rooms that survive are original. He expanded a colonial farmhouse into a three-story Georgian mansion considered one of the grandest houses of its era in North America. The construction process was largely borrowed from Caribbean construction practices. A painting of Mary and Elizabeth Royall, the teenage daughters of Isaac Royall Jr., executed by John Singleton Copley about 1758, is in the collection of the

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

. A reproduction hangs in the Royall House. Copley also painted their father's portrait about 1769. An earlier family portrait from 1740 is in the Special Collections Department, Harvard Law School Library. During the American Revolution, the Royall family were Loyalists, and after

British soldiers The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Br ...

skirmished with Patriot militiamen at the

battles of Lexington and Concord The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. The battles were fought on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord ...

in 1775, the Royalls left Medford and boarded a ship in Boston. They sailed to Halifax, Nova Scotia and then to England. Isaac Royall never returned to Medford. After the Royalls' flight, the Massachusetts General Court confiscated the estate. John Stark made the Royall House his headquarters before the British evacuation of Boston on March 17, 1776. The mansion was used during the early months of the Revolution by Generals Lee, Stark, and Sullivan.

, according to legend, interrogated two British soldiers in the house's Marble Chamber. The story that Molly Stark watched the movements of the British troops in their camp by the river from a lookout on the roof is undocumented. In 1806, the estate was returned to Isaac Royall's heirs, who sold it. In accordance with Isaac Royall's will, a portion of his estate was donated to Harvard University and used to found

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

Slave Quarters

The Slave Quarters were located in Medford 35 feet from the Royall House. There were more than 60 enslaved Africans who resided there over the 40 years. When Sir Isaac Royall Sr. expanded the house in the 1730s, he adopted a practice from the Caribbean and built an "out kitchen," which was a detached kitchen meant to keep the heat away from the main house in the summer. In the 1760s, they added an clapboard extension which expanded the house and formed the original slave quarters. The Slave Quarters had working and sleeping quarters, along with a summer kitchen. Today, you can take a tour of the Royall House finding a "kitchen chamber" where slaves worked and slept in a room on the second floor. One of the enslaved women from the Royall House, Belinda Sutton, is noted for her court petitions for a pension from the estate of the Royall family. It is considered one of the earliest cases of reparations in the United States.

Preservation

In 1898, the Sarah Bradlee Fulton Chapter of the

Daughters of the American Revolution The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) is a lineage-based membership service organization for women who are directly descended from a person involved in the United States' efforts towards independence. A non-profit group, they promote ...

conceived the idea of preserving the Royall House "for the sake of its history and aesthetic value." It was restored by

Joseph Everett Chandler Joseph Everett Chandler (December 11, 1863 – August 19, 1945) was an American architect. He is considered a major proponent of the Colonial Revival architecture. Biography Joseph Everett Chandler was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the son o ...

. On Patriots' Day in 1898, they opened the house to the public for a Loan Exhibition of colonial furnishings and valuable relics. In 1906, this group of women recruited a wider group of "patriotic men and women" and formed the Royall House Association. The group's initial mission was to raise US$10,000 to purchase the house, the slave quarters and three-quarters of an acre of surrounding land to be maintained as a museum, which they accomplished by April 1908. Over the years, the Royall House has undergone a number of interior and exterior restorations to its buildings and site. In 1960, the Royall House was designated a National Historic Landmark.

References

External links