The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1879-10-02
The First sTnteryiewer."

Old Mrs. Annie Royal was the hrst
American interviewer. Of this we sup
pose there can be no doubt. She made
a tremendous impression in those days
when women were proyerbially demure,
when the few female lobbyists wore
scooped hats and long wells, and were
even in that dress considered immodest.
There was never any one like her before
her day, and she had no successor. A
rough old customer, a regular Suwarrow
in peticoats, such as Byron describes the
old chap to have been, Mrs. Royal
thought nothing of collaring the Presi-
dent in his sanctum, or of invading the
Senator in his innermost retreat. They
tried to laugh her down, but she was too
terrible for ridicule; she welded q
sharp pen; she had stout lungs and
formidable voice, which was perfectly
masculine, commanding eyes, compact
form, Coriolanns carriage, and when
angry was dreaded by her victims as if
she were an Hyrcanian tigress. This
old lady died on the 1st of October, 1854.
at the advanced age Of ninety.two. She
published in Washington two week
ly papers called "7He Huntrsss' and
"PaM Pry," devoted to personal and
political sketches of men and things
about the city.
Old Mrs. Royal deserves to be per-
petuated, if for no other reason than as
part of American romance. Only
think of it-as late as the May term of
the Washington court of 1929 she was
indicted as a Common scold," which re-
suited in fine of IS in the August fol-
lowing. Her maiden name was Annie
Butler. She was Of I,ish descent, al
though born in Western Maryland.
When iu her sixth or seventh year she
was seized by Indian warriors out of the
cornfeld and carried by them to their Ohio
homes, where she remained until her
fifteenth year, and, of course, acquired
the habits of these savages and had no
earthly chance of any ordinary or even
Christian education. The way she met
her husband was romantic. Colonel
Royal, native Virginian, it seems, knew
the facts of the abduction of Annie. He
was widower and much older than she,
and doubtless remembered her appear
ance when child. Travelling in Ohio
he visited the Shawnees, Wyandottes,
&C., and among one Of these tribes acci-
dentally discovered her, obtained her
liberty, sent her to school for two years
and married her. She had an elegant
home until her husbands death in 1915
or 1916, when the litigation with the
heirs that followed that event reduced
her to such poverty that when she ar
rived in this city, in the fall of 1928 she
had scarcely shoes to her feet. She found
patrons in an humble family by the
name of Dorrice, where she, fortunately,
stopped to warm her feet. Mrs. Royal
was distinguished by hatred of what
she called shams and hypocrites of all
arts, and she was "death" on intemper-
ance, although she loved the pipe and
INDUCED in tobacco. She was perhaps
the original crusader in the matter of
intemperance, although she did not pray
in front of "corner groceries" nor whis-
key saloons. But that she WAS aggres-
sive in all warfare may be CLEANED from
the fact that an impotent and irritable
clergyman in the heat of passion once
threw her down stairs and broke her
leg.
Old Mrs. Royal hated eGeminate
young men, and she said: "Why do they
want lazy, sinecur, laces under gov
eminent? Why don't they hoe their
own row." Indeed, she long antedated
Horace Greely with the admonition,
$50 West. young man." She was dreaded
as a blackmailer; she was solicited as a
writer of pufs; she made noise over
the whole land, for the sting of an asp
was in her pen, and her little handbill
newspaper was q perfect sensation in
those quiet days of the Republic. Where
her newspaper files are it is probable no
one knows; perhaps none of her works
exist. She bounded, annoyed, fattered,
pryed into the affairs of all the promi.
nent public men of her day-in fact, she
was perfect disease. All doors were
open and all locks Ito speak poeti-
cally) were burst open by her when she
resolved on an interview. The comic
element in her strangely contrasted with
those grave days, when the Washingto-
nian and the Jeffersonian dignity espe-
cially pervaded the Executive chambers
and the Senatorial halls.