What could demonstrations at Harvard Law School have to do
with us here in Maine?
A beloved waterway in Yarmouth hides a secret within its name.

By Colin W. Sargent

Dateline 18 November 2015

Royall Must Fall, a group of Harvard Law students, has had it. Fed up with their school’s seal emblazoned with the family crest of Isaac Royall Jr., a wealthy slaveholder, they sense the times call for an “art-action.” No longer will they tolerate those golden sheaves of wheat. For some the shield simply represents the generous gift that founded the law school in 1817. For others, it’s a haunting reminder of the horror and terrible price paid to generate that unspeakable wealth.

When darkness descends, the activists slip into Wasserstein Hall on a mission. They cover the offensive seals with black tape in repudiation and to demand a change in the design. “Isaac Royall Jr. was more than simply a slave owner; he was complicit in torture and in a gruesome conflagration wherein 77 black human beings were burned alive,” Odette Herbert flashed on #royallmustfall. Among them was Hector, the Royalls’ longtime servant and plantation foreman, whom they watched burn at the stake.

But what started as a thought-provoking protest against this symbol turned ugly. And personal. Hours later, some person or persons unknown sneaked into Wasserstein. The next morning, the student body and faculty were confronted with a hall full of defaced portraits. The black tape had been repurposed to blind the eyes and gag the mouths of the African American law professors depicted. A backlash? “Perhaps the defacer is part of the law school community,” wrote Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy, J.D., in an op-ed for The New York Times. “But maybe not.”

Esther Agbaje, J.D., Harvard Law 2017
“I was one of the activists at the Harvard demonstrations. We became involved with a group that came across the shield and how it was related to the Royall family, and that basically their money came from slave plantations.” The next morning, Agbaje and her fellow law students entered the hallways, ready for class. “We saw that the photos of professors of color were covered with strips of black tape.” That brought to light the “systemic barriers we still face.”

Harvard University Police Department launched a hunt for the defacer(s) but closed the investigation in late January, 2016. In March of 2016, the Dean announced the seal would be scrapped. But as late as March of 2020, the former seal—it’s been called “Harvard’s Confederate flag”—continues to be seen on campus here and there.

For years the faculty knew it as a ‘shield of shame.’ The Guardian noted, “In 2003, when now Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was named Dean of Harvard Law School, she declined the endowed Royall professorship” and its storied “Royall Chair.”

Nobody likes a hot seat. And, yes, there is a connection to the Royal River in Maine.

Since the protests, Harvard Law has apologized for perpetuating the Royall sheaves of wheat in its escutcheon (designed in 1936 from the coat of arms of Isaac Royall Sr., born in North Yarmouth in what is now Maine) and revised it to remove all traces of the Royall family. The school has also funded a $5M study to identify more of Harvard’s links to slavery, though it has not yet stripped the name from the world-famous chair known as the Royall Professorship of Law.

Overshadowed by coronavirus, global press outlets carried the story that Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda had written a letter to Harvard president Lawrence S. Bacow, insisting on real money: “Reparation from Harvard would compensate for its development on the backs of our people…Reparation is not aid; it is not a gift; it is compensation to correct the injustices of the past and restore equity. Harvard should be in the forefront of this effort.” Sir Ronald M. Sanders, Ambassador to the U.S. from Antigua and Barbuda, has also volleyed with Harvard: “The reputation that Harvard enjoys internationally is intertwined with the dark legacy of Royall’s Antigua slaves who died in oppression, uncompensated for their lives in slavery and their death in cruelty.’”

Reflections in the River

Sir Ronald Sanders, Ambassador for Antigua and Barbuda to the United States

Do Mainers have a responsibility to think of the Royall family’s crimes against the people of Antigua and to stop celebrating the name of the river without any context?
Heinous crimes of this nature have been celebrated in the name of this river. It should not require a great deal of difficulty to realize that celebration should be ended. That human life should be taken so easily and wantonly is wrong in itself.

Is it negligent of us in what we like to call Vacationland to say we aren’t responsible for what happened in Antigua so long ago? ‘It didn’t happen here, so why do we and our tourists need the history lesson?’
Yes. It would be for the same reason that the later deniers in Germany of what happened at the time of Hitler’s extermination of the Jews would be hiding from the truth. It would be wrong for any of us to use the passage of time [as an excuse] to not take the actions we know would be right.

Since early November 2019, has Harvard responded with a financial proposal for funding academic scholarships for Antiguan students as partial retribution, as you’ve suggested in your correspondence with them?
I have been in communication with Dr. Lawrence Bacow, the president at Harvard University. Indeed, I visited Dr. Bacow and a number of his senior staff. I gave him a number of proposals, most of which he rejected, some of which he accepted. I took what he said he would undertake in good faith. I am unhappy with what happened in this discussion because Dr. Bacow’s written communications did not reflect my notes. Since then he has been a victim of COVID-19, and I have not pressed the matter. But I will after his recovery. There has never been a better time for Harvard to step in… Its trust funds run to $47B.

Humble Beginnings

William Royall (1580-1676), a cooper, sailed from England to America on the Lion’s Whelp in 1629. After landing at Salem, he worked as an indentured servant for the Massachusetts Bay Company. As a reward, he was deeded land on the headlands of the Westcustogo River. Back then, North Yarmouth was called by the Wabanaki name Westquatuckqua (muddy waters), the various spelling of which has since evolved to Westcustogo. Royall must have had some influence for church services to have been held in his home.

But “Repeated conflicts between colonists and the Native Americans caused… William [Royall] to take his family and remove to Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1675,” according to geni.com.

We all know Dorchester. Tough town. After growing up there, William’s grandson, Isaac Royall Sr. (1672-1739), chose a life at sea, becoming a rum merchant, sugar merchant, and, according to On the Battlefield of Merit (Harvard University Press, October 23, 2015) by Daniel R. Coquillette and Bruce A. Kimball, “an adventurer who sought to make his fortune in the slave trade. By 1700, [at] 23, he was in Antigua, part owner of a Massachusetts-built slaver, ironically called the Mayflower.” When opportunity knocked, Royall pounced on the chance to invest in a plantation in Antigua. “A 1712–1713 census recorded 27 white men ‘fit to bear arms’ and 364 slaves [no mention of women in either category]. Here Isaac Royall Jr. was born in 1719, and his sister Penelope, in 1724.” The family business thrived.

But because of living conditions on the Royall plantation in Popeshead, Antigua, countless enslaved workers died. In the forests, including one secret meeting place four miles from the Royall plantation, enslaved people and maroons hiding from captivity plotted a revolt. According to face2faceafrica.com, “The plan was that, in late October of 1736, during a grand ball for the westerners in honor of George II’s coronation, a 10-gallon barrel of gunpowder would be smuggled into the building and blown up, killing every single westerner at the ball. The sound of the explosion was to be an alert for several allied enslaved Africans to start killing every white they came across, causing a general massacre…”

The plot unraveled; the insurrection was quashed before it started. No landowners were killed.

But all hell broke loose, and the executions began.

“During the slave revolt, the son [Isaac Royall Jr.] was only 13 years old,” says Dan Coquillette, visiting professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School. “I’m sure he was part of the force that suppressed the revolt, but not necessarily the reprisals. The father [Isaac Royall Sr.] clearly would be.”

The Mainer

“The pure brutality is the father,” Coquillette says. “He doesn’t seem to have done anything for Maine that’s generous. But in Harvard’s case, “The shield was everywhere. In books, everywhere. [Professor of American Legal History] Annette Gordon- Reed said, ‘Imagine having had to deal with that as an African American student.’ “The students [demonstrating in] Royall Must Go took over the student lounge,” Coquillette says. “They were forced to. The Royall River [a.k.a. Royal] is not on a podium. It’s not on stationery. It’s the name of a river.”

And not even the original name.

River of Blood

“Let’s take the Doubting Thomas position,” Coquillette says. ‘You’re taking Isaac Royall Jr. out of the context of the time when he lived, and that’s unfair. Washington and Jefferson had slaves. Seen in the background, Isaac Royall Jr. was an unremarkable slave owner.’ His father, however, was different. That’s vindicated by his own words in his reports to London. Isaac Royall Sr. was a brutal man, even by the standards of his time. He didn’t found Bowdoin College or anything. You could make it an easy case to change the river.”

Burned Alive

Dr. Natasha Lightfoot, associate professor of history at Columbia University, says, “Hector was an enslaved driver owned by Isaac Royall Sr., a position of some trust within the hierarchy of enslaved labor in the Caribbean. Drivers functioned like foremen, supervising enslaved field men and women who did the work of planting, irrigating, hoeing, reaping, and processing sugar cane… Drivers were not exempt, however, from receiving punishment themselves, and also may have had to endure the peculiar torture of inflicting bodily harm on friends and family when ordered to do so. Hector was named as a co-conspirator at the trials, and for his alleged crime he was burned at the stake on February 18, 1737. Royall received £100 compensation for what authorities judged to be the value of Hector at the time of his death.”

If you lived in Maine and knew what you know, would you change the name of our river?
“I would certainly change the name. Keeping the name of “Royall River” makes the river a lasting monument to the violence of slavery and settler colonialism in the Americas. There were communities established in the area long before the arrival of any European settlers. I would suggest researching what First Nations/Native American peoples lived near the river and likely used it for their daily lives and commerce, and naming the river after them.”

Map of the Human Heart
The Royal River snakes its way for 39 miles from the Atlantic Ocean to Sabbathday Lake. According to yankeemarina.com, “Navigating the Royal River, with a MLW [mean low water] controlling depth of eight feet in most boats, is easy. The approach to the channel is between the eastern ends of Cousins and Littlejohn islands, and the western ends of Mosher and Little Mosher islands. The channel officially begins just south of Lanes Island at Buoy 1 (green flashing light, period of four seconds) and proceeds to the basin just south of Interstate 295. The channel is well marked—care must be used though to not skip any buoys. If you are new to the river and would like us to guide you please give us a call to arrange an escort.”

Dolce Far Niente Means “Pleasant Idleness”

The following is the way the 1736 conspiracy is described in its entirety in Gladys N. Hoover’s The Elegant Royalls of Colonial New England (Vantage Press, 1974):
“For many years the black slaves had led hard lives and savage and bloody uprisings were followed by repressive measures and frequent executions of slave leaders. The blacks vowed to destroy every white on the island, a threat which the whites believed might come to pass. Gone was the beautiful dolce far niente life of the plantation owners and their families. As Isaac Royall watched his wealth diminishing and his livelihood disappearing, he did some hard thinking and came to the conclusion that he must leave Antigua…”

Why Did The Royalls Really Return to New England?

According to Coquillette and Kimball, “The 1736 revolt…followed a number of natural disasters, including terrible droughts, the worst being in 1725, a massive hurricane in 1733, and earthquakes in 1735. ‘Black leprosy,’ tuberculoid leprosy, was common among the enslaved, and in 1736 there was a smallpox epidemic. Isaac Royall Sr. had seen enough. As early as 1732 he was buying land along the Mystic River in what is now Medford [Massachusetts], where he moved his family and slaves in 1737 and where he lived until his death in 1739.”

Speaking at the bicentennial celebration of Harvard Law School, Coquillette tackled Isaac Royall Jr. and the founding of the Royall Chair at Harvard Law head on. “It was out of the blue that Harvard received a bequest… of $3,000, which translates to about $400,000 today. Not a huge bequest, but it was designed to permit the university to establish a chair in law or a chair in medicine at the university’s election.” The bequest was from the estate of a preposterously wealthy man who died in England, Coquillette said. “The reason why Isaac Royall [Jr.] was in England: He made his money in the slave plantations of Antigua— sugar slavery where if you cut your finger, it gets infected and you die. I mean, brutal slavery. He had 170 slaves on Antigua. He brought 24 here. He came here sort of to retire, to get away from the yellow fever and the slave revolts. He suppressed one with his father, brutally. But when the [American] Revolution broke out, he was a monarchist, and he got the word from Lexington of the fight and he just fled. He left his family behind. So when I take new ‘one Ls’ [first year law students] around and show them the portrait of Royall, I say, ‘Look. Here’s the founder of the school: brutal slaveholder, traitor, and coward. Other than that, a perfect role model for you.’”

One L or 2, Still the Same
“I think of Royall with two L’s. I don’t see dead people, but I do see consonants erased by time and convenience. They haunt me at night. I grew up reading about the Royalls in books like The Elegant Royalls of Colonial New England (Vantage Press, 1974). I learned by rote that the Royall family hailed from North Yarmouth, heart of the Royall River. But I remember no misdeeds of the Royall family in Antigua mentioned in my Maine history schoolbooks. I grew up in a sure-handed world that knew how to make its way along a river without pausing to wonder how many souls it might have drowned.”–CWS

Royall Conundrum

“The earliest map I can find naming the river Royal was a map by Wolfgang Willliam Römer in 1699, where it was spelled ‘Roiall River,’” says Dr. Matthew Edney, the Cartographic Scholar at the University of Southern Maine’s Osher Map Library. “There’s another from 1722 by another mapmaker where it is named ‘Royalls River.’”

“The river is named for William Royall, the first permanent settler,” Dr. Katie Worthing of Yarmouth Historical Society says. “The anglicized version of the name for the area around the mouth of the river is Westcustogo. According to historian William H. Rowe, Royall’s first homestead was at Fogg’s Point (still labeled as such on Google maps in South Freeport). He later moved to Royall’s Farm, which was in the triangular piece of land between the Royal and Cousins Rivers.

“…Our main local sources (William H. Rowe’s Ancient North Yarmouth and Yarmouth, Maine, 1636-1936 and Augustus Corliss’s Old Times, North Yarmouth, Maine) agree that the river was indeed named for William Royall, as he was among the very first European settlers and owned land around the mouth of the river.

“I suspect the shift between Royal and Royall was somewhat inconsistent over time. For example, in one 1857 map, it’s labeled Royal River, but in another 1857 map, it’s actually called Yarmouth River. In an 1871 map, they use Royals River. The commemorative plaque installed in 1939 by the Village Improvement Society refers to Royall’s River. Postcards from the 1910s and ’20s also use Royall’s River. Later 20th-century sources use Royal River; the 1988 De- Lorme Gazetteer uses Royal River.

“I have one article from 1986 that mentions that the 1937 U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey topographical map switched from Royall’s to Royal. That map was then used for other sources, so Royal proliferated from there, much to many residents’ dismay. Currently, I think many folks recognize Royall or Royall’s as the older, original name for the river. I’m not sure of a percentage.”

* * *

A lingering question. Did the river become more universally known as the Royall River after the Royalls became “elegant” and wealthy? The sheaves of wheat were added to Harvard’s shield in 1936. Shouldn’t hazard lights flash when Village Improvement Societies carve history in stone 200 years after it happened?

Colonials felt privileged to change Westcustogo to Royall. Shouldn’t it be just as easy to change it back?

Back to Shore
“You can keep the history and learn from it. You can watch a Woody Allen movie but stop giving Woody Allen awards. Don’t conflate erasure with removing elements of worship. Think of the star-maker machine that led Hoover to title her book The Elegant Royalls of Colonial New England. Maybe that’s our starting point, Maine. Whether or not we see the word Royall erased as the name of a river, let’s erase the word elegant.” –CWS

Meet a Thoroughly Modern Royall

Patricia Inness Royall, formerly of Yarmouth and now a resident of East Boothbay, answers the telephone with a bright, upbeat voice. She’s just finished a career as executive director of the Boothbay Harbor Chamber of Commerce.

She’s enthusiastic rather than guarded. “Isaac Royall left the gift that founded the Royall chair at Harvard Law School,” she says. There’s the slightest pause. “They took the Royall coat of arms off the Harvard Law shield.”

Do you think the name of the Royall River should be changed? One scholar has suggested that the Maine people consider a name that predates the Royalls’ arrival. Maybe Westcustogo.
“Was it Westcustogo? William Royall was deeded property, but that was on Indian land. He built three houses there and added a fence. The Indians would still attack him and burn down the houses. My uncle was Admiral William F. Royall, a genealogist. He gave me his books and charts. I have a map from the 1600s of Georges Bank. William Royall came to America on the ship Lion’s Whelp in [1629]. You know Phineas Sprague from Portland Yacht? His ancestor was on the same boat. I met Phineas once at the Portland Flower show. He said, ‘Your family and my family came over on the Lion’s Whelp. They were literally on the same boat at the same time!’”

What would you say to the Harvard demonstrators if they camped out on your lawn and demanded to know why the Royalls did what they did in Antigua?
“Janet Halley, who holds the Royall chair, has written thoughtfully about this. I feel you can’t erase history. The idea of enslaving anyone is awful to me. But it happened. Of course I’m sensitive about it because it was my family. But if you erase it from the books, that doesn’t mean it never happened.”

 

If you feel this story is an indictment of what the Royall family did in the past, I’ve missed the mark. It’s about what we all do and understand in the future. Each and every soul in New England prospered from the infamous Triangle Trade and still enjoy the effects of that prosperity. All of what we venerate as Colonial New England’s culture was built on the backs of enslaved people. No family is exempt from responsibility—particularly mine. —Colin W. Sargent

 

RRCT.org translates Westcustogo as “muddy.” Mainecoastsurveying.com translates it as “gullied river banks.”