{"id":28365,"date":"2026-06-19T00:39:02","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T04:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=28365"},"modified":"2026-06-19T00:39:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T04:39:28","slug":"royall-house-slave-quarters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2026\/06\/19\/royall-house-slave-quarters\/","title":{"rendered":"The Royall House and Slave Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The slave quarters at Medford’s Royall House and Slave Prison are believed to be, according to the museum, \u201cthe only known extant separate slave quarters in the northern United States.”<\/a> The building to house the children, women and men the Royall family forced into labor is evidence of the wealth and villainy that took place here. But of course, scratch at any wealthy local property from this era and you’re likely to find it too was a slave camp–including, as far as I can tell, the land upon which the Massachusetts State House stands in Boston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isaac Royall (1672-1739), a shipping merchant, who changed the family name from \u201cRyall\u201d to \u201cRoyall,” and married into money, amassed a great fortune running a sugar cane plantation on the Caribbean island of Antigua and \u201ctrading in sugar, rum, and enslaved people,” according to the museum.<\/a> After word of a planned slave revolt swept through the Caribbean island of Antigua in 1736, Whites convicted 132 Blacks of participating in the conspiracy and executed 88, most burned alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Greg
Greg Cook’s drawing of Royall House (right) and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, June 3, 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The following year, Royall and his family returned to his native New England, bringing “with them at least 27 enslaved Africans.<\/a>” They settled into a (then) 500-acre property called \u201cTen Hills Farm\u201d in Medford that Royall had purchased in 1732, and then expanded an existing c. 1690 brick house there into a three-story Georgian mansion. At least 60 people would be enslaved on the plantation, according to the museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Royall died in 1739. His 20-year-old son Isaac Royall Jr. (1719-1781) inherited the slave farm. \u201cOne of the colony\u2019s wealthiest men and an active real estate investor, Isaac Royall Jr. held highly visible public offices and entertained lavishly,\u201d according to the museum<\/a>. \u201cAlthough he was apparently sympathetic to the Patriot cause, Isaac\u2019s wealth was based on his strong ties to powerful Loyalist families and the English crown. He left Medford three days before the [Revolutionary War] battle of Lexington and, failing to secure passage to Antigua, sailed to Nova Scotia where he remained for a year. He then joined his daughters\u2019 families in England, where he died of smallpox in 1781.\u201d A 1781 bequest to Harvard College from Royall Jr. “helped establish Harvard Law School,” according to the university.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter Isaac Royall Jr. fled to England at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War,” the house museum reports,<\/a> “the [Massachusetts] General Court confiscated his estate. The mansion was used during the early months of the Revolution by Generals Lee, Stark, and Sullivan, and was visited by George Washington who, according to legend, interrogated two British soldiers in the Marble Chamber.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Massachusetts returned the property, these days a National Historic Landmark, to Royall Jr.\u2019s granddaughter Elizabeth Royall Pepperrell Hutton in 1804, who sold it two years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures, and nature that you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And\u00a0sign up for our free, occasional newsletter<\/a>\u00a0so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. Follow us on Instagram<\/a> and tell us what you really think on Facebook<\/a>. (All content \u00a9 Greg Cook 2026 or the respective creators.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Royall
Royall House Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, June 3, 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Royall
Royall House Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, June 3, 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Marker
Marker at Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, June 3, 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Royall
Royall House in Medford, Massachusetts, June 3, 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Looking
Looking into Royall House in Medford, Massachusetts, June 3, 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Royall
Royall House (left) and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, June 3, 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Royall
Royall House Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts as seen from the house porch, June 3, 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Royall
Royall House (left) and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, June 3, 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Royall
Royall House (right) and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, June 3, 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Royall
Royall House Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, June 3, 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Royall
Royall House Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, June 3, 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Royall
Royall House (right) and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, June 3, 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Royall
Royall House Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, June 3, 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Royall
Royall House in Medford, Massachusetts, June 3, 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The slave quarters at Medford’s Royall House and Slave Prison are believed to be, according to the museum, \u201cthe only known extant separate slave quarters in the northern United States.” The building to house the children, women and men the Royall family forced into labor is evidence of the wealth and villainy that took place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28385,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[490,120],"tags":[479,318,3,880,413],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28365"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28407,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28365\/revisions\/28407"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}