üRoyall, Anne Newport1769╨1854writer, lobbyist and publisherBorn near Baltimore on June 11, 1769, Anne Newport endured an unsettled childhood in Pennsylvania and Virginia and while still a girl entered with her twice-widowed mother the domestic employ of Captain William Royall, a somewhat eccentric Virginia gentleman farmer, scholar, deist, Freemason, and Revolutionary War veteran. Royall became interested in her, saw to it that she was educated in his extensive library, and married her in 1797. He died 16 years later and left her most of his property, but after ten difficult years of litigation his other heirs succeeded in breaking the will, leaving her penniless at the age of fifty-four. Ill as well, Anne Royall spent several months struggling to gain a pension as the widow of a Revolutionary veteran, but although she had the assistance of John Quincy Adams her quest was not successful until 1848; even then, the pension turned out to be a mere pittance. But she was a woman of great courage, and in 1824 she began to travel and write to earn her living. Between 1826 and 1831 Royall published ten volumes of travel accounts, of which the first, Sketches of History, Life and Manners in the United States, by a Traveler, 1826, was afterward the best known. The others╤The Black Book; or, A Continuation of Travels in the United States, three volumes, 1828╨1829, Mrs. Royall╒s Pennsylvania, two volumes, 1829, Mrs. Royall╒s Southern Tour, three volumes, 1830╨1831, and Letters from Alabama, 1830╤remained valuable sources of information about the life of the period. She also published a novel, The Tennessean, 1827. She espoused many causes and attacked many others, and her anti-Presbyterianism resulted in 1829 in a conviction on the charge of being a common scold. In 1830 Royall settled in Washington, D.C., and in December 1831 she began publication of a newspaper called Paul Pry, a weekly compilation of gossip and acerbic comment that she peddled herself, often in the corridors of the Capitol. In December 1836 Paul Pry was succeeded by the Huntress, which ran more or less continuously until July 1854, shortly before her death. A vigorous and effective lobbyist for measures of which she approved and an equally effective opponent of measures of which she did not, she became in time the conscience of Washington. She was a dangerous enemy of any corrupt politician, no matter how highly placed, although the accusations she hurled about her were not always well aimed. She was, in her friend Adams╒s words, ╥a virago errant.╙ During her last years she suffered greatly from illness and poverty, and she died in Washington on October 1, 1854. styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ ? !I 7 5¬ 8 !I ô !I ▄ !I !I P !I l !I å !I ¢ !I ╢ !I ╓ !I Ω !I U !I c !I 5¬ !I t !I | !I !I !I " !I * !I link `
