24 Facts About Royall Tyler

Royall Tyler was an American jurist, teacher and playwright.

Royall Tyler was born in Boston, graduated from Harvard University in 1776, and then served in the Massachusetts militia during the American Revolution.

Royall Tyler was admitted to the bar in 1780, became a lawyer, and fathered eleven children.

Royall Tyler wrote a play, The Contrast, which was produced in 1787 in New York City, shortly after George Washington's inauguration.

Washington attended the production, which was well-received, and Tyler became a literary celebrity.

Royall Tyler attended Boston Latin School and Harvard University, where he earned a reputation as a quick-witted joker.

Royall Tyler was admitted to the bar in 1780 and practiced in Portland, Maine, before moving to Braintree, Massachusetts.

Mary Cranch was the sister of Abigail Adams, and Royall Tyler soon met John Quincy Adams, with whom he became friendly, and Abigail, whom he courted.

Royall Tyler had developed a reputation as a profligate while in college, supposedly squandering half his inheritance on parties, in grog shops and pursuing women after the death of his father.

Royall Tyler served again in the militia in 1787, as aide de camp to Benjamin Lincoln during the suppressing of Shays's Rebellion.

Royall Tyler was friendly with Joseph Pearce Palmer and Palmer's wife Elizabeth Hunt, and resided in their Boston boarding house.

In 1796 Royall Tyler married their daughter Mary, who was eighteen years younger, and they moved to Guilford, Vermont.

Several Royall Tyler children had prominent careers, including four who became members of the clergy.

Royall Tyler died in Brattleboro on July 13,1866, and was buried next to her husband.

From 1811 to 1814 Royall Tyler was a Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Vermont.

The play was well-received, and Royall Tyler became a literary celebrity.

Royall Tyler continued to write, and frequently collaborated with his friend Joseph Dennie, including co-writing a satirical column which appeared in Dennie's newspaper The Farmer's Weekly Museum.

Royall Tyler published The Algerine Captive in 1797 and wrote several legal tracts, six plays, a musical drama, two long poems, many essays, and a semifictional travel narrative, 1809's The Yankey in London.

In later life Royall Tyler admitted to his youthful arrogance and profligate conduct, but said he regretted only the limitations which his past placed upon his career and later ambitions.

Royall Tyler was believed to have fathered a child with Katharine Morse, the cleaning woman in the Harvard College buildings when Tyler was a student.

Royall Tyler died in Brattleboro, Vermont, on August 26,1826, as the result of facial cancer that he had suffered from for ten years.

Royall Tyler has been identified as the model for Jaffrey Pyncheon in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables.

Royall Tyler's great-grandson Royall Tyler was a prominent historian.

Royall Tyler's descendant Royall Tyler was born on 1936 and is a well known scholar and translator of Japanese literature.