Throughout the remainder of the month of February, the Melrose Historical Commission will mark Black History Month by posting content related to our city’s African-American past. Much of this story can be told through homes and other buildings in Melrose that provide direct, if fragile links to a history which has largely been forgotten. Throughout this series, we hope to call attention to the centrality of the Black experience in the shaping of our city, and of how our historic structures can be used to tell that story.
You will find the plaque in the first image in the little park where Lebanon, Lynde, and Grove Streets meet; the second is on Main Street, in Pine Banks Park near the Malden border. They honor Deacon Thomas Lynde and Ensign Thomas Lynde, father and son.
The elder Lynde was certainly not the city's first settler, as Native peoples had been living in Melrose for well over 10,000 years when he was granted lands here by the town of Charlestown in 1638 and 1639. He was, however, Melrose's first recorded slave owner. In the third image you see a section of his will, drawn up in 1671, wherein he wrote "I bequeath to my dearly beloved wife Rebeckah Lynde.... my negro Peter & my negro girl Nan to enjoy & dispose of as she sees good."
Peter and Nan bent their backs to work the Lynde family's lands, and Peter no doubt strained his muscles to help raise the roof of his master’s son’s house in 1670. Their uncompensated labor quite literally laid the foundations of the place that would become Melrose.
There is no plaque to honor them.
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