The National Historic Site in West Cambridge both embraces and digs beyond the traditional stories of its famed former occupants, Longfellow and Washington.

Descendants of Tony and Cuba Vassall were guests at Sunday’s Juneteenth gathering at the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, where their family was once enslaved by Loyalist who fled on the eve of the American Revolution.

After the slaveholders at 105 Brattle St. fled the oncoming George Washington and his army in the run-up to the Revolutionary War, the enslaved people were treated little better by their liberators – but managed to thrive nonetheless.