Anne Royall

Anne Royall (June 11, 1769 – October 1, 1854) was a travel writer, newspaper editor, and, by some accounts, the first professional woman journalist in the United States.

She was born Anne Newport in Baltimore, Maryland. Anne grew up in the western frontier of Pennsylvania before her impoverished and fatherless family migrated south to the mountains of western Virginia. There, at age of 16, she and her widowed mother were employed as servants in the household of William Royall, a wealthy American Revolution major, freemason and deist who lived at Sweet Springs in Monroe County (now in West Virginia). Royall, a learned gentleman farmer twenty years Anne's senior, took an interest in her and arranged for her education, introducing her to the works of Shakespeare and Voltaire, and allowing her to make free use of his extensive library.

Anne and William Royall were wed in 1797. The couple lived comfortably together for fifteen years until his death in 1812. His death touched off litigation between Anne and Royall's relatives, who claimed that they were never legally married and that his will leaving her most of his property was a forgery. After seven years, the will was nullified and she was left virtually penniless.

Anne spent the next four years traveling around Alabama, writing letters to a friend about the evolution of the young state that were eventually turned into a manuscript published as Letters from Alabama. She also penned a novel called The Tennessean before setting off for Washington D.C.

She arrived in Washington in 1824 to petition for a federal pension as the widow of a veteran; under the pension law at the time, widows had to plead their cases before Congress. She remained unsatisfied until Congress passed a new pension law in 1848. Even then, her husband's family claimed most of her pension money.

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