ROYALL HOUSE AND SLAVE QUARTERS

The Royall House and Slave Quarters function as a site of memory. In the 18th century, the plantation, which once made up most of what is now modern-day South Medford, was 504 acres and home to the Royall family. The Royalls were a prominent white colonial family from Antigua, where they owned a sugar cane plantation and enslaved hundreds of people. After moving to Medford in 1737 with 27 enslaved people, the Royalls lived on their plantation for nearly 40 years until 1775, when they left as Loyalists before the start of the American Revolution. Throughout their tenure in Medford, the Royalls enslaved some sixty women, men, and children, whose bondage made the family's luxurious lifestyle possible. As the largest slaveholding family in Massachusetts history, the Royalls and those they enslaved are central to the state's connection to slavery and how it functioned in the northern colonies.

As one of the only remaining freestanding quarters where enslaved people lived and worked in the North, the museum bears witness to their lives, to the intertwined stories of wealth and bondage in pre-Revolutionary Massachusetts, and the resistance and political and legal activism of enslaved and free Black people in the eighteenth century. Today, the museum focuses on exploring the experiences of the enslaved by placing them at the center of the tours and understanding this history from their perspectives.

The museum is open to the public for tours on weekends from June through October, while school and group tours are available from mid-March to mid-November. The museum also presents a range of public programs throughout the year. Members receive free admission to the museum and free or discounted admission to most programs.