Ten Hills Farm: The Forgotten History of Slavery in the North

13 The Benefactor

13 The Benefactor Not a year after the Royalls returned to Massachusetts, a slow parade of carriages pulled up at the entrance to the Master’s elegant estate in Medford. Thirteen-year-old Penne, dressed in fine imported silk, met them at the door and curtsied to arriving guests as slaves retrieved their coats. There was nothing like a party to pave one’s way within the gentry; and what a party it must have been, a heavy feast of oysters, roasted meat, filleted fish, and crispskinned fowl all washed down with rum and punch, inside a loud balloon of festive noise. For the Master and his children in that moment, the nectar of life at Ten Hills Farm must have tasted just as sweet as it ever did in Popeshead District. Money, privilege, and position softened everything they touched. Inside the thrumming din of conversation on that day, young Isaac Royall and his bride, both still short of twenty then, danced into the polished core of Boston’s gentry. Here was the place where they would stay. From the farm’s gracious perch beside the Mystic, long before he came upon his first gray hairs, young Royall would help define the culture of his time. Like other prominent men, he soon could boast a complex web of influence, many slaves and properties, varied social duties, and occasional other obligations reserved for people at the pinnacle of colonial wealth and culture. But on that chilly night in early spring 1738 the far-off knell of leadership was hard to hear. Instead the sound of laughter, fiddle music, and excited gossip filled his ears. And so Isaac and his bride, 168 CHAPTER 13 a dark-haired, broad-boned Scottish heiress named Elizabeth McIntosh , began their journey with light hearts and perhaps very little thought ahead. For Elizabeth McIntosh the wedding at King’s Chapel was surely a happy turn after several early traumas. Her father, a young merchant (proud descendant of a Scottish queen), drowned at sea while she was still a toddler. Her mother died before Elizabeth’s fifteenth birthday. Orphaned at that early age and next in line for a considerable Old World fortune, Elizabeth, with her sister Mary, moved from Bristol, Rhode Island, to Boston, where they lived with a gentleman named Job Lewis, his wife, and her young brother, Thomas Palmer. There the girls might have enjoyed a quiet passage through their teens. But news of their inheritance brought trouble. A greedy uncle came to town, petitioned the governor to become their guardian, and said he wished to bring his nieces “home” (where they had never been) to Scotland, where he could mind their riches. Governor Jonathan Belcher refused the man’s petition. It was an unambiguous ruling, but Shawn McIntosh did not give up so easily . Having sailed the Atlantic to lay his claim, he hatched a plan to steal his nieces from their keepers and invited them for dinner with their guardians the night before he sailed. The dinner was uneventful and it ended early. But the evening was far from over. Just after nine that night, as the girls and their several chaperones made their way down Boston streets, they were set upon by a dozen men. In the darkness and confusion, rough hands and the element of surprise won out. Elizabeth and Mary were pushed along a narrow alley, then dragged onboard their uncle’s ship to sail at the first light. Thomas Palmer, shaken but uninjured in the attack, dusted himself off and raced to the governor’s house, where he breathlessly explained the assault, obtained a warrant, and was given Jonathan Belcher’s permission to gather up a posse. By sunup on that Sunday morning, Palmer’s group was armed and ready. Any ship’s captain facing ten men bearing guns would have done what that ship’s captain did. He let the posse board. The girls were freed. Their uncle was captured and put under guard. But while the posse did its work aboard that swaying vessel, news of THE BENEFACTOR 169 the kidnappings rippled from pew to pew in Sunday services. By the time Shawn McIntosh appeared, held tight by guards escorting him through town, an angry crowd had gathered. Scores of jeering citizens squeezed close and tried to touch the prisoner, to spit on him and roughly tear his clothes. Shawn barely made it to the...