Last updated: February 28, 2025
Person
Cuba Vassall
Massachusetts Archives. Boston, Mass.
Quick Facts
Place of Birth:
Antigua
Date of Birth:
about 1734
Place of Death:
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Date of Death:
September 16, 1812
Place of Burial:
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cuba (later Cuba Vassall) was the matriarch of a family that included abolitionists and community builders. As she navigated slavery and freedom in Massachusetts, Cuba advocated for her own and her family’s interests. In comparison with many formerly enslaved women of her era, Cuba Vassall’s life is relatively well documented.
Cuba was born in about 1734 in Antigua. Her mother Abba, herself, and her siblings – Robin, Walker, Nuba, Trace, and Toby – were enslaved by Isaac Royall, a plantation owner and major figure in the New England-Caribbean-European Triangular trade. Her name (and her mother’s) reflect West African day-name traditions.
In 1737, Isaac Royall transported three-year-old Cuba and her family to Medford, Massachusetts, where they were enslaved at the Royalls’ Ten Hills Farm. Two years later, Isaac Royall’s death brought another seismic change to young Cuba’s life. His will bequeathed Abba, Cuba, her five siblings, and a young girl named Present – as well as half of the Antigua plantation and over 100 enslaved people along with it – to his daughter, Penelope Royall. When Penelope married Henry Vassall in 1742, her move from Ten Hills to his home in Cambridge meant Cuba’s move as well. Cuba would spend much of the rest of her life in the town, part of a community of enslaved – and eventually free – African Americans.
In Cambridge, Cuba met Tony – a man enslaved as Henry’s coachman – who would become her husband. At some point prior to the 1780s, Cuba and Tony began using the surname 'Vassall.' The couple had six children from the 1750s-1770s: James, Dorrenda, Flora, Darby, Cyrus, and Catherine. Cuba endured multiple tragic separations from her children during these years. In an attempt to resolve the mounting debt Henry Vassall left behind upon his death in 1769, his widow Penelope sold several of the people they enslaved. She sold Cuba and her son James to Penelope’s nephew, John Vassall, living nearby at what is now 105 Brattle. She sold 2-year-old Flora to the Nicholas family in Billerica, and John would soon “give” infant Darby to George Reed of Woburn.
The iron grip the Royalls and Vassals had on Cuba’s life began to unravel as the American Revolution approached. In December 1772, Tony Vassall secured Flora's freedom, and the 5-year-old was released to her still-enslaved mother, Cuba. In finding a way to purchase their daughter's legal freedom, Tony and Cuba Vassall began reuniting their family.
Increasing threats of violence to Brattle Street’s loyalist elite drove the enslaver Vassalls from their homes in late 1774. Cuba Vassall and her family appear to have remained. Though their legal status was tenuous, they began carving out their freedom. In the summer of 1775, Cuba’s then 6-year-old son Darby returned to his parents in Cambridge. For the first time, Cuba lived under the same roof with her husband and six children – without enslavers present. The couple’s youngest child, Catherine, was born during this period. They continued living on Brattle Street, farming three-quarters of an acre for their own livelihood, for the next six years.
In the 1780s, Cuba and Tony Vassall advocated to reinforce their family's freedom. Tony and Cuba Vassall would petition the Massachusetts General Court for compensation (Tony was subsequently awarded a £12 annual pension), be evicted from their former enslaver’s land, and purchase their own home nearby. When Tony Vassall died on September 2, 1811, Cuba Vassall submitted her own petition to the General Court, signed with her “X” mark, arguing that Tony’s pension:
was granted to her said husband on her your petitioner’s account & for her support out of the said John Vassall’s confiscated estates as she was prior to the Revolution, and at the time of the confiscation, the domestic slave & dependent of said John Vassall & her said husband was not. But, as the grant was in his name, and he is lately deceased, and she is no longer, by the terms of said Resolve entitled to the benefit thereof, tho’ now at a very advanced period of life and destitute of other regular means of support, she therefore prays your Honors…to grant the continuance of the said pension of twelve pounds lawful money to her during the remnant of her life.
Though her petition was granted, Cuba Vassall died almost exactly one year after her husband, on September 16, 1812. Three days before her death, a baptism was recorded at First Parish in Cambridge:
Cuba Vassal (Negro Woman) baptized by her own desire (in private, dangerously ill).
At 78 years old, Cuba Vassall was widowed and vulnerable – yet she died in freedom, baptized in a church of her choosing. Perhaps she died in the home she had owned with her late husband, surrounded by the now-adult children she had protected for so many years.
Sources
Bell, John. “George Washington’s Headquarters and Home.” Cambridge, MA: Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters, Department of the Interior, National Park Service, February 29, 2012.
Digital Archive of Massachusetts Anti-Slavery and Anti-Segregation Petitions, Massachusetts Archives, Boston MA, 2015, "Passed Resolves; Resolves 1811, c.154, SC1/series 228, Petition of Cuby Vassall", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/UVLNE, Harvard Dataverse, V5.
"Jno Nicholas Jun / to / Flora Negro Child / Manumission,” Middlesex County Deeds, Vol 73, page 457. Accessed in "Massachusetts Land Records, 1620-1986."
"The Royalls." Royall House and Slave Quarters. Accessed January 12, 2023. https://royallhouse.org/the-royalls/
Will of Isaac Royall Senior, Middlesex County Probate Court Records No. 19535. Accessed at https://royallhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/PrimarySources_public_records.pdf
Whiting, Gloria McCahon. Belonging: An Intimate History of Slavery and Family in Early New England. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024.