Royall, Anne (1769–1854)

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Royall, Anne (1769–1854)

Colonial writer who is considered one of the first women journalists in America. Name variations: Anne Newport Royall. Born Anne Newport on June 11, 1769, near Baltimore, Maryland; died on October 1, 1854, in Washington, D.C.; daughter of William Newport (a farmer) and Mary Newport; married William Royall (a farmer who had served in the American Revolution), in 1797 (died 1813); no children.

Selected writings:

Sketches of History, Life and Manners in the United States (1826); The Tennessean (novel, 1827); The Black Book; or, A Continuation of Travels in the United States (3 vols., 1828–29); Mrs. Royall's Pennsylvania (2 vols., 1829); Mrs. Royall's Southern Tour (3 vols., 1830–31); Letters from Alabama (1830).

Anne Royall was born Anne Newport on June 11, 1769, near Baltimore, Maryland, the older of two daughters of Mary Newport and William Newport, a small farmer who was still loyal to the king of England. The loss of his land and the hostility of his neighbors towards his political stance prompted him to move his family to the western Pennsylvania frontier. By 1775, the Newports bought land near Hannastown in Westmoreland County. Anne learned to read from her father, and later attended a one-room log schoolhouse nearby.

William Newport died about 1775, most likely in a skirmish with Native Americans. Anne's mother Mary Newport married a man named Butler, and after his death she moved her family down the Shenandoah Valley to Virginia, hoping for help from family friends or relatives. When Anne was 16, they moved to Sweet Springs in Monroe County (now part of West Virginia). Mary became a servant to Captain William Royall, a wealthy farmer who was a personal friend of George Washington and had served in the American Revolution. Captain Royall had one of the largest libraries in Virginia, was a Freemason, and was an avid admirer of Voltaire and Thomas Paine. Known as an eccentric to his neighbors, he set his slaves free and refused to fence in his cattle. Royall took Anne as his protégé, let her read anything in his library, and taught her his theories about life and society. They were married in 1797.

After her husband's death in 1813, Anne Royall left what she called the "cold, dreary, hard-frozen hills" of western Virginia and moved to Alabama with three servants and her inheritance. She lived well until 1823, when some of her husband's relatives managed to void his will by accusing her of adultery. Destitute, and with her reputation in tatters, she went to Washington to ask for the widow's pension due her since Captain Royall had been a veteran; these negotiations would drag on into her old age.

In order to make a living, Royall began traveling throughout the country and writing accounts of her trips. Despite her previous complaints about life in Virginia, she seemed unbothered by hard travel on foot, by stagecoach and by steamer. Throughout the 1820s, alone and with almost no money, she visited nearly every important town in the United States, taking notes in shorthand. She produced five books in ten volumes about her travels, which are still considered important sources of information about America in that era: Sketches of History, Life and Manners in the United States (1826); The Black Book; or, A Continuation of Travels in the United States (three vols., 1828–29); Mrs. Royall's Pennsylvania (two vols., 1829); Mrs. Royall's Southern Tour (three vols., 1830–31); and Letters from Alabama (1830). She also wrote a novel, The Tennessean (1827), and a play, The Cabinet; these latter two, unlike her travel books, were not well regarded.

The style of her travel books reveals Royall's opinionated and at times vitriolic temperament. In her straightforward, readable, if sometimes disjointed prose, she heaped praise or criticism on the people and places she visited, naming names and unconcerned about offending public opinion. Her irascible temper got her in trouble on at least two occasions. In 1829, after she called a pillar of the community "a damned old bald-headed son of a bitch" (in public, twice), she was taken to court and charged with being a "common scold"—a charge unused since Puritan times that had been dug from dusty law books solely to punish her. She was convicted, much to her humiliation (and to the delight of her detractors, no doubt), but the court declined to sentence a 60-year-old woman to the prescribed punishment of ducking in a pond; instead, she was fined ten dollars, which her lawyer paid. In another instance, during a fight about Freemasonry, which she wholeheartedly supported, she suffered a broken leg after being thrown down a flight of stairs.

However, Royall's tenacity and uncompromising principles led to her establishment as one of America's first female journalists when, on December 3, 1831, she began publishing Paul Pry, a weekly Washington, D.C., paper featuring gossip and her sharp-tongued comments. Dressed in an ill-fitting child's plaid coat, she prowled the halls of Congress, cajoling people to buy her publications; those who declined frequently found themselves unflatteringly featured in the following week's edition. According to legend, she once caught President John Quincy Adams swimming in the Potomac River, and sat on his clothes until he agreed to let her interview him. This story is probably fanciful, however, for she counted Adams and his wife Louisa Catherine Adams among her truest friends; Adams, who supported her efforts to receive her widow's pension, once likened her to "a virago errant in enchanted armor."

Paul Pry was published until November 19, 1836, when it was succeeded by The Huntress, which Royall edited for nearly 20 years, until July 2, 1854. She promoted her political views and private agendas (such as Sunday mail delivery), and publicized graft and scandal, much to the terror of corrupt politicians. Royall believed anyone in public life was fair game for her attacks. She despised missionaries and ministers, denouncing them as "monsters" who were "glutted with women and money … aiming to overturn our government and establish the reign of terror"; she also thought that booksellers who stocked a preponderance of books from England were conspiring against America. While her strong opinions earned her many enemies, she also had admirers in government who respected the sincerity and courage of her views.

In her old age, Royall finally received the pension for which she had been fighting for so long. She chose a lump sum rather than a yearly benefit, and her husband's legal heirs took half of it. After she paid her debts and legal fees, she received ten dollars for her trouble. Seven of these she gave to her loyal friend and printing assistant, Sally Stack , leaving her with three dollars. Penniless, she died in Washington, D.C., on October 1, 1854, only three months after shutting down The Huntress, and was buried in the Congressional Cemetery.