Isaac Royall, Jr.

Portrait of Isaac Royall, painted in 1769 by John Singleton Copley

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Isaac Royall, Jr. (1719–1781) was a colonial American slaveholder who played an important role in the creation of Harvard Law School.

He was the son of Isaac Royall, an Antiguan slaveholder who moved his family to Medford, Massachusetts in the early 18th century.^[1] He took over his father's estate, "Ten Hills Farm," which is now the Isaac Royall House, a museum containing the only slave quarters in the northeast United States.^[2] During the Revolution, Royall, who had patriot sympathies but significant Loyalist connections, fled to Nova Scotia and subsequently to England, where he died of smallpox in 1781.^[1]

In his will of 1779, Royall left land to Harvard College to establish the first professorship in law at the school. This bequest resulted in the founding of Harvard Law School.

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