Royall Tyler

Royall Tyler was an American playwright, jurist, and educator born in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 18, 1757, and died in Brattleboro, Vermont, on August 26, 1826. His Broadway credits as a book writer include The Contrast and May Day in Town, both produced in 1787.

Tyler was the son of Royall Tyler, a wealthy merchant and political figure who died in 1771, and Mary (Steele) Tyler. He attended Boston Latin School before enrolling at Harvard University, where his roommate was Christopher Gore and where he earned a reputation as a quick-witted joker. He graduated from Harvard in 1776 and briefly served in the Massachusetts militia during the American Revolution, participating in John Hancock's Rhode Island expedition. He began studying law under Francis Dana in late 1778, was admitted to the bar in 1780, and practiced initially in Portland, Maine, before relocating to Braintree, Massachusetts.

While lodging in Braintree with Mary and Richard Cranch — Mary being the sister of Abigail Adams — Tyler became acquainted with John Quincy Adams and courted Abigail Adams's daughter, known as Nabby. Abigail Adams, in a letter to her husband John Adams, acknowledged Tyler's wit and agreeable manner while noting his negligence in business and his dissipation of time and fortune. Nabby Adams ultimately ended the relationship, with the approval of her family. Tyler served again in the militia in 1787, acting as aide-de-camp to Benjamin Lincoln during the suppression of Shays's Rebellion, and was subsequently dispatched to Vermont to negotiate for the arrest of the fleeing rebels.

His comedy The Contrast, produced in New York City in 1787, is recognized as the first American comedy performed by professional actors. Its debut came shortly after George Washington's inauguration, and Washington along with several members of the First Congress attended the production. The play was well-received, and Tyler gained recognition as a literary celebrity. That same year, May Day in Town, or New York in an Uproar was also produced. Tyler went on to write six plays, a musical drama, two long poems, numerous essays, a semifictional travel narrative, and the novel The Algerine Captive, published in 1797. He frequently collaborated with his friend Joseph Dennie, co-writing a satirical column for Dennie's newspaper The Farmer's Weekly Museum.

In 1796, Tyler married Mary Palmer, the daughter of his friends Joseph Pearce Palmer and Elizabeth Hunt Palmer, who was eighteen years his junior. The couple moved to Guilford, Vermont, and later to Brattleboro in 1801. They were the parents of eleven children: Royall, John, Mary, Edward, William, Joseph, Amelia, George, Charles Royall, Thomas, and Abiel. Several of their children pursued prominent careers, including four who entered the clergy. Mary Palmer Tyler lived to age 91, dying in Brattleboro on July 13, 1866, and was buried beside her husband.

As a Federalist, Tyler served as Windham County State's Attorney before being appointed a Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court in 1801, despite the Vermont House of Representatives being controlled at the time by the Democratic-Republican Party. He became Chief Justice in 1807 and served in that role until 1812. From 1811 to 1814, he held a professorship in jurisprudence at the University of Vermont, and from 1815 to 1821 he served as Windham County's Register of Probate. In 1812, he ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate as a Democratic-Republican, losing because the Federalists then controlled the Vermont General Assembly.

Tyler died on August 26, 1826, in Brattleboro, from facial cancer he had endured for ten years, and was buried at Brattleboro's Prospect Hill Cemetery. He has been identified as the model for Jaffrey Pyncheon in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables. The main theater at the University of Vermont bears his name. His great-grandson Royall Tyler (1884–1953) became a prominent historian, and his descendant Royall Tyler (born 1936) is a noted scholar and translator of Japanese literature.