Mount Hope Farm

in how and where to celebrate. What’s presented here is a curated version of history. The Farm sits on sacred Pokanoket/Wampanoag land, taken through extreme violence during the bloody King Philip’s War. Claiming, owning and passing down this land came at the near destruction of Indigenous life here. The Royall family built and expanded immense wealth by owning, buying and exploiting Black and Indigenous people as property. Human lives were priced in Rum and we were the Rum hub of the world. The labor of enslaved people built and sustained the estate here at Mount Hope, helping fuel the Royalls’ rise into one of the largest slaveholding families in the North. They tie the land to farming and “heritage”but it is more accurate to refer to it as a system that depended on violence, control and the reducing of people to assets in order to create and preserve white wealth. In 1730, an estate inventory connected to this land lists enslaved people with no names… nine men, one boy, six women, five children, and two infants, valued together at £1,355, nearly a quarter of the entire estate. In later accountings, the Enslaved are named only in fragments: Mingo, Hector, Anthony, Cesar, Fortune, Betty, Diana, Nanny, Philice. Their lives reduced to entries, their bodies and labor treated as assets. Records show repeated medical visits to enslaved people at the “Mount Estate,” evidence not of care, but of preserving labor. Death records remain (Antonio, Mingo, Fortune, Bette… documented only at the end of their lives. A “Negro child” recorded without a name. Even marriage… Cesar and Jennie, exists in record, but within a system that never recognized their freedom. This is the foundation of this land. And yet, what’s presented centers beauty, heritage and celebration without holding the violence, forced labor and displacement that made it possible. There is still no mention of these important people who made this place possible, on the premise. This land should be a place of truth, memory, and accountability. Not one where the hardest parts are minimized so the rest can be enjoyed without interruption. There is almost zero clear, visible acknowledgment of reality. The farm experience today, uplifts enslavers and “heritage” while erasing the violence, displacement and exploitation. The venue and the town have not reckoned the past and offer a curated version of history that protects comfort over truth. If you’re considering this venue, understand that you’re stepping onto land with a much deeper and darker history than what’s presented. Ask yourself if it’s acceptable to profit from fantasy passed off and promoted as history. Maybe you believe people should stop making money off of the work of Enslaved People and that it’s time to retire holding nostalgia for lifestyles that depend on hierarchy and imperiousness. It’s long past time for Mount Hope Farm to remove the gossamer and reveal that this land is anything but romantic and far from swoon-worthy.