The Royall family regained possession of the property in 1805. To-day it is owned by the Royall House Association, which keeps it open to the visitors. These come in large numbers to see relics of former days, including what is said to be the only chest that survived the Boston Tea Party, the sign of the Royall Oak Tavern in Medford, which bears the marks of the bullets of the soldiers who were on their way to the Battle of Bunker Hill, the old furniture, the first fork used in the Colony, and the furnishings of the quaint kitchen fireplace, which dates from 1732.

Photo by Wallace Nutting, Inc., Framingham Center, Mass
BROADHEARTH, SAUGUS, MASS.

XIII

BROADHEARTH AND THE BENNET-BOARDMAN
HOUSE, SAUGUS, MASSACHUSETTS

TWO REMARKABLE SPECIMENS OF THE OVERHANG HOUSE

"Thomas Dexter of Lyn, yeoman," was the first owner of much of the land on which Lynn, Massachusetts, is built. Evidently he was land poor, for on October 22, 1639, he "mortgaged his fearme in Lyn ... for two oxen & 2 bulls upon condition of payment to Simon Broadstreet of Ipswich £90 the first day of August, the next following with a reservation upon the sale of the said fearme to give the said Dexter the overflow above the debt and damages of the said £90."

Six years later the Registry of Deeds at Salem told of the sale, to Richard Leader, Gent, of England, of a bit of the farm on which Governor Broadstreet held a mortgage. Mr. Leader was the agent of "ye Company of undertakers of ye Iron Works," and he thought that Dexter had the best location for the purposes of the company that proposed to start what proved to be the first successful iron works in the Colonies. The quaint story of the transaction was entered thus:

"Thomas Dexter of Lyn in the County of Essex ye[oman] for the sum of 40 £ st[erling] hath sowld unto Richard Leder for ye use of ye Iron works all that land, wch by reason of [a] damme now agreed to be made, shall overflow and all sufficient ground for a water course from the damme, to the works to be erected, and alsoe all [the] land betwene the an[cient] water course and the new extended flume or water course togeather with five acres and an halfe of land lying in the corn field most convenient for the Iron Works and also tooe convenient cartwayes that is to one on each side of the premises as by a deed indented bearing date the twentie seaventh of January, 1645, more at lardge apth."