PEPPERELL HOUSE, KITTERY, MAINE.
The young William Pepperell was graduated from Cambridge in 1766, and the next year married the beautiful Elizabeth Royall. In 1774 he was chosen a member of the governor's council. But when this council was reorganised under the act of Parliament, he fell into disgrace because of his loyalty to the king. On November 16, 1774, the people of his own county (York), passed at Wells a resolution in which he was declared to have "forfeited the confidence and friendship of all true friends of American liberty, and ought to be detested by all good men."
Thus denounced, the baronet retired to Boston, and sailed, shortly before his father-in-law's departure, for England. His beautiful lady, one is saddened to learn, died of smallpox ere the vessel had been many days out, and was buried at Halifax. In England, Sir William was allowed £500 per annum by the British government, and was treated with much deference. He was the good friend of all refugees from America, and entertained hospitably at his pleasant home. His private life was irreproachable, and he died in Portman Square, London, in December, 1816, at the age of seventy. His vast possessions and landed estate in Maine were confiscated, except for the widow's dower enjoyed by Lady Mary, relict of the hero of Louisburg, and her daughter, Mrs. Sparhawk.
Colonel Royall, though he acted not unlike his son-in-law, Sir William, has, because of his vacillation, far less of our respect than the younger man in the matter of his refusal to cast in his lot with that of the Revolution. In 1778 he was publicly proscribed and formally banished from Massachusetts. He thereupon took up his abode in Kensington, Middlesex, and from this place, in 1789, he begged earnestly to be allowed to return "home" to Medford, declaring he was "ever a good friend of the Province," and expressing the wish to marry again in his own country, "where, having already had one good wife, he was in hopes to get another, and in some degree repair his loss." His prayer was, however, refused, and he died of smallpox in England, October, 1781. By his will, Harvard College was given a tract of land in Worcester County, for the foundation of a professorship, which still bears his name.
It is not, however, to be supposed that in war time so fine a place as the Royall mansion should have been left unoccupied. When the yeomen began pouring into the environs of Boston, encircling it with a belt of steel, the New Hampshire levies pitched their tents in Medford. They found the Royall mansion in the occupancy of Madam Royall and her accomplished daughters, who willingly received Colonel John Stark into the house as a safeguard against insult, or any invasion of the estate the soldiers might attempt. A few rooms were accordingly set apart for the use of the bluff old ranger, and he, on his part, treated the family of the deserter with considerable respect and courtesy. It is odd to think that while the stately Royalls were living in one part of this house, General Stark and his plucky wife, Molly, occupied quarters under the same roof.
The second American general to be attracted by the luxury of the Royall mansion was that General Lee whose history furnishes material for a separate chapter. General Lee it was to whom the house's echoing corridors suggested the name, Hobgoblin Hall. So far as known, however, no inhabitant of the Royall house has ever been disturbed by strange visions or frightful dreams. After Lee, by order of Washington, removed to a house situated nearer his command, General Sullivan, attracted, no doubt, by the superior comfort of the old country-seat, laid himself open to similar correction by his chief. In these two cases it will be seen Washington enforced his own maxim that a general should sleep among his troops.
In 1810, the Royall mansion came into the possession of Jacob Tidd, in whose family it remained half a century, until it had almost lost its identity with the timid old colonel and his kin. As "Mrs. Tidd's house" it was long known in Medford. The place was subsequently owned by George L. Barr, and by George C. Nichols, from whose hands it passed to that of Mr. Geer, the present owner. To be sure, it has sadly fallen from its high estate, but it still remains one of the most interesting and romantic houses in all New England, and when, as happens once or twice a year, the charming ladies of the local patriotic society powder their hair, don their great-grandmother's wedding gowns and entertain in the fine old rooms, it requires only a slight gift of fancy to see Sir William Pepperell's lovely bride one among the gay throng of fair women.
MOLLY STARK'S GENTLEMAN-SON
Of the quaint ancestral homes still standing in the old Granite State, none is more picturesque or more interesting from the historical view-point than the Stark house in the little town of Dunbarton, a place about five miles' drive out from Concord, over one of those charming country roads, which properly make New Hampshire the summer and autumn Mecca of those who have been "long in populous city pent." Rather oddly, this house has, for all its great wealth of historical interest, been little known to the general public. The Starks are a conservative, as well as an old family, and they have never seen fit to make of their home a public show-house. Yet those who are privileged to visit Dunbarton and its chief boast, this famous house, always remember the experience as a particularly interesting one. Seldom, indeed, can one find in these days a house like this, which, for more than one hundred years, has been occupied by the family for whom it was built, and through all the changes and chances of temporal affairs has preserved the characteristics of revolutionary times.