The Isaac Royall House and Slave Quarters is a historic house located in Medford, Massachusetts, near

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university in Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts, United States, with additional facilities in Boston and Grafton, as well as Talloires, France. Tufts also has several Doctor of Physical Therapy p ...

. 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 A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a National Register of Historic Places property types, building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the Federal government of the United States, United States government f ...

, 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 quarters in

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

, and its

American Revolution The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...

associations with General

John Stark Major-General John Stark (August 28, 1728 – May 8, 1822) was an American military officer who served during the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. He became known as the "Hero of Bennington" for his exemplary service at the Ba ...

, Molly Stark, and General

George Washington George Washington (, 1799) was a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. As commander of the Continental Army, Washington led Patriot (American Revoluti ...

. 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 believed to be born in Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay, to Richard and Mary Singleton Copley ...

of Isaac Royall Jr. 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 A spandrel is a roughly triangular space, usually found in pairs, between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame, between the tops of two adjacent arches, or one of the four spaces between a circle within a square. They are frequently fil ...

panels. Royall also constructed outbuildings in 1732, including the only known freestanding slave quarters that survive in

New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...

. After this construction, Royall brought 27 enslaved Africans from

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

, which doubled the enslaved population of the community.

Early history

Isaac Royall Jr. (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

parapet A parapet is a barrier that is an upward extension of a wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/brea ...

s. Other features he added include the false

ashlar Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...

siding on the new western facade and great Doric

pilaster In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...

s 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 Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. 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

, the Royall family were Loyalists, and after British soldiers skirmished with Patriot militiamen at the

battles of Lexington and Concord The Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775 were the first major military actions of the American Revolutionary War between the Kingdom of Great Britain and Patriot (American Revolution), Patriot militias from America's Thirteen Co ...

in 1775, the Royalls left Medford and boarded a ship in

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

. They sailed to

Halifax, Nova Scotia Halifax is the capital and most populous municipality of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Nova Scotia, and the most populous municipality in Atlantic Canada. As of 2024, it is estimated that the population of the H ...

and then to

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. Isaac Royall never returned to Medford. After the Royalls' flight, the

Massachusetts General Court The Massachusetts General Court, formally the General Court of Massachusetts, is the State legislature (United States), state legislature of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts located in the state capital of Boston. Th ...

confiscated the estate.

made the Royall House his headquarters before the British evacuation of Boston on March 17, 1776. The mansion was notably used during the early months of the Revolution as the headquarters of

's second-in-command, Charles Lee. Lee affectionately nicknamed it "Hobgoblin Hall", after Yester Castle in Scotland. Washington, 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 (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United ...

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 a 40 year period. 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 a 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 National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (often abbreviated as DAR or NSDAR) is a lineage-based membership service organization for women who are directly descended from a patriot of the American Revolutionary War. A non-p ...

conceived the idea of preserving the Royall House "for the sake of its history and aesthetic value." It was restored by Joseph Everett Chandler. 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$10,000 (~$ in ) 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. In 2023,

and the Royall House and Slave Quarters entered a cooperation agreement, including financial support, as one initiative by the school to honor the work of enslaved people which contributed to the existence of

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

References

External links