We’re kicking off Women’s History Month this year with a look at one of our favorite Hill residents of all time: Anne Royall. Over the years, we have told the story of Royall, how she went from young, impoverished, widow on the frontier to a newspaper owner and writer of note, how her outspoken nature made her the target of local bluenoses, including being charged with and convicted of being a common scold, how our attempt to illustrate a story about her caused a badly misguided book cover, and finally her enshrinement in a book on D.C. women’s history.
But, today, I want to go back and write about her most famous legend – how she forced President John Quincy Adams to give her an interview. A detailed telling of this story was printed in the May 8, 1913 edition of The Youth’s Companion:
One morning when the president, after swimming far out into the stream, turned to make his way back toward the shore he was astonished to see, sitting upon his clothing, which he had left upon a stone on the bank, a spectacled female with a look of great determination. It was Anne Royall, and beside her were a pen and bottle of ink, and in her hand was a sheet of paper.
“Woman, depart!” sputtered the president as he swam up into the shallows where he could touch the bottom a-tiptoe.
“You know who I am, Mr. President.” said the woman. “and you know what I want. I’m going to sit here until you tell me what you intend doing with that Cherokee Indian bill.”
“Go away, woman!” shouted the president. “This is scandalous!”
“It’s scandalous.” Anne is reported to have said “that the people of a free country have to resort to such extreme measures to find out what their servants are going to do. You give me the information that I am entitled to; then I’ll give you your clothes. Otherwise I’ll stay here – and you’ll stay there!”
There was only one outcome to such a struggle. The shivering president told Anne what he expected to do and why he would do it. Then, and not until then, did Anne, armed with copious notes, rise from the stone that she had made famous and hasten to her little printing office, where she lost no time in getting that first and most famous presidential interview into print.
Given Royall’s well-known predilection for interviews and her forceful nature, this does not sound at all out of character. However, the closer you look at the story, the less likely it appears. First off, the first time the story appeared was only a few years earlier; before that, the President so caught was not Adams but Tyler. An article from December 10, 1892 in the Washington Evening Star states that “one day she caught Mr. Tyler bathing in the Potomac and succeeded in interviewing him by sitting on his clothes until he told her what she wanted.”
Finally, in the books written by Royall, she meets with Adams numerous times, and these interviews were done with his full cooperation each time, when he was Secretary of State he “saluted [her] in softest accents, and bid [her] to be seated,” later, when President, she describes a visit to him where she is astonished “to witness the ease and simplicity with which he receives alike the lowest citizen and the distinguished stranger.”
While we may never know the exact source of either version of this story, it seems quite clear that it was made up out of whole cloth. Which is a pity, as the image of the information-hungry woman facing off with the red-faced President is a fun one, indeed.