William Reid Royster was the 8th child of eight (8) to be born to W.E. and Berenice S. (Scarritt) Royster.

*Kansas City councilman
*Missouri Democratic Representative 1966-1970

The Kansas City Star
June 8, 1972
By Thomas J. Bogdon

WILLIAM R. ROYSTER, PARTY LEADER, DIES
State Rep. William R. Royster, a descendant of pioneer Kansas City families and an influential figure in Missouri Democratic politics, died yesterday at St. Luke's Hospital after a long illness. He was 57 years old.

Royster, a 3-term member of the General Assembly and former member of the city council, lived at 3500 Gladstone Boulevard in the mansion built in the 1890s by his grandfather, Judge E. L. Scarritt.

Royster has been ill since the spring of 1969. Spokesmen at St. Luke's said he had been a patient there five times in the last two months, and that he was admitted most recently May 21. Royster also sought treatment for the illness, described as a spinal ailment, in Mexico on two occasions earlier this year.

Royster, first elected to the house in 1966, withdrew last month as a candidate for the reelection, citing his health as a reason. He had served on the city council 1959 to 1963. In the 1971 legislative session Royster was in Jefferson City only briefly to take the oath of office and returned once for a meeting of the House Urban Affairs Committee, of which he was chairman.

As chairman of that committee, Royster was in a position to pass on many bills affecting Kansas City and St. Louis. His influence was evident last year when the committee held a bill to provide a half-cent city sales tax to benefit the Area Transportation Authority until Royster urged favorable action.

Despite his absences in the 4-month legislative session that ended April 30, Royster kept in frequent telephone contact with events in Jefferson City. He was influential both as chairman of the urban affairs committee and head of the Democratic Good Government association, a Northeast Kansas City political group which he founded.

Royster founded the Northeast area political group in the late 1930s, and concentrated on delivering majorities for candidates and issues in the 12th, 13th and 15th wards.

William Reid Royster was born Dec. 30, 1914, in Independence, the son of William E. Royster and the former Berenice Swinney Scarritt. His parents' unannounced wedding in 1897 in Glasgow, Mo., created a sensation in Kansas City society. Miss Scarritt was a belle of society here and Royster, commercial agent of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, was the scion of an old Mobile, Ala., family.

Royster was the great grandson of the Rev. Nathan Scarritt, who came to Missouri from New Hampshire, after living in Illinois, in 1845. Mr. Scarritt, a Methodist minister, lived in Fayette, Mo., before coming to Kansas City and, while in Fayette, helped found a seminary for young women that later became Central Methodist College.

Mr. Scarritt, after arriving in the Kansas City area, was a missionary at the Shawnee Indian Mission in Johnson County and later was placed in charge of Methodist churches in Kansas City and Westport, then a separate town.

In 1862 Mr. Scarritt bought 40 acres of land in the northeast section what is now Kansas City and at one point owned farms that occupied large sections of the downtown area, including the site of Union Station.

At his death in 1890 Mr. Scarritt reportedly had a net worth of $2 million, primarily acquired through land transactions. He was married 1850 to Martha Matilda Chick, the daughter of Col. William Chick, the first postmaster of Kansas City. Colonel Chick delivered mail in a silk hat and kept a beacon burning in his home on Quality Hill to help guide boats on the Missouri River.

The eldest son of this marriage was Edward Lucky Scarritt, whose middle name was in honor of Prof. William T. Lucky, principal founder of the seminary at Fayette. Representative Royster attended Central College there before being graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

E. L. Scarritt, judge of the Jackson County Circuit Court, was a city counselor of Kansas City in 1885 and, according to newspaper accounts of the period, rejected wide support and refused to become a candidate for mayor. He also served on the park board.

There was a mild controversy in 1963 when Royster, then a former member of the city council, objected to the positioning of a picture of his ancestor at the City Hall.

Judge Scarritt married Mary Anne Swinney of Glasgow, descendant of a long line of Stiths, Daniels, Joneses, Savages, and Swinneys from Virginia. Her grandfather, Capt. William Daniel Swinney, had moved to Howard County, Missouri, in 1832 and made a fortune in tobacco. The family lived in "Eglantine Castle", a 17-room house in Glasgow.

Four portraits painted by George Caleb Bingham of members of the Swinney branch of the family are hung at the Royster home.

Until her death March 5, William R. Royster's mother, Mrs. Berenice Royster, lived at the Gladstone Boulevard home, which was built with plans by Stanford White, a New York architect. She and the elder Royster were early members of the Kansas City Country Club. Although representative Royster did not belong to a particular Methodist congregation, his mother belonged to the Melrose Methodist Church, one of six churches built by the Rev. Nathan Scarritt.

Mrs. Royster was a poet, and author of a book of poetry about her eight children, called "Pieces of Eight." It was a long standing tradition at the Gladstone Boulevard house to celebrate Christmas around a 25-foot Christmas tree placed at the foot of a sweeping staircase.

The mansion itself, a block east of the former R. A. Long mansion, now the Kansas City Museum, on Gladstone, is an impressive stone and shingle structure. The site is on a bluff and is one of the highest points in the city. Mr. Scarritt donated considerable land above Cliff Drive to the city as a park down to Scarritt Point above the Missouri.

A ledge about 20 feet wide lies below the full length of the bluff, Mrs. Berenice Royster noted in a 1963 article in the journal of the Jackson County Historical Society, "where my father and his brothers used to drive their Pa's cows back and forth morning and evening. This was a wide and rocky path, on which the city made the beautiful and romantic Cliff Drive."

William R. Royster became engaged in Kansas City and Jackson County politics as part of the effort to oust the Pendergast machine. He was one of the founders, with John C. Gage, of the Charter Party in the movement that became symbolized by small broom emblems, representing the cleanup effort.

Royster, who firmly believed in political patronage despite his opposition to the Pendergast machine, was responsible for apportioning 200 City Hall jobs after the Charter Party won control of the city government in the 1940 elections. He had responsibility for those jobs as leader of the old ninth ward, which includes the northeast area that was always Royster's political base.

"I see nothing wrong with obtaining employment -- in politics or out -- for someone who has a family and is in need of a job for his livelihood," Royster said in an interview at St. Luke's Hospital nearly a year ago. "I've been following this philosophy for 31 years, and I'm glad I have been able to help as many as I have."

Royster's adherence to this traditional tenet of partisan politics was one of the factors that eventually led to a split with other segments of the reform group which became the basis for the Citizens Association.

A sign of the breakup of the Charter Party movement came with Royster's resignation March 14, 1942, as secretary to George S. Montgomery, presiding judge of Jackson County. This was Royster's first public office. In a letter of resignation, Royster wrote, "Since our recent political views have been somewhat different and since my presence in your office would be embarrassing to you, I hereby tender my resignation, effective immediately."

Royster had been the judge's secretary from the time he was graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1939.

Soon after leaving the Jackson County Courthouse Royster joined the Navy and served four years in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. He commanded a destroyer at the war's end as a lieutenant commander. He volunteered for naval service in the Korean War and served four more years.

In 1959 he was a factionally endorsed candidate for the city council. Royster was elected with Mayor H. Roe Bartle as member of the then 8-member city council, but soon took the lead against Bartle's leadership. One of the first acts of the new council was to oust L. P. Cookingham, a holdover from the Citizens Association years, as city manager. Then followed a succession of city managers and the controversy for which the 1959 to 1963 years became noted.

Royster representing an area that had in recent years become the home of numerous poor and aged persons despite its earlier pretentions, was a sometimes bitter foe of tax increases both as a councilman and a state legislator.

It was learned in February that Royster had been married recently to Doris Birt, a longtime friend. Mayor Charles B. Wheeler, Jr., was Royster's best man.

On learning of Royster's death, Wheeler noted Royster had introduced legislation for the benefit of Kansas City.

"I have lost a very good friend," Wheeler said, "a man who I remember as having been instrumental in getting juvenile programs and General Hospital programs passed for Kansas City in the state legislature."

Royster recalled last summer that he supported the half-cent sales tax for the A.T.A. out of loyalty to Wheeler. He commented at the time, "I wasn't for it until the mayor stood at this bedside and asked me for my support."

Wheeler said in the same bedside interview, "Bill Royster and I are like two old cowboys who have been in enough barroom brawls together to know we can get more done together than by fighting."

He also leaves a son, William Edward Royster, Black Earth, Wis.; a brother, Edward L. S. Royster, 5215 Wyandotte, and four sisters, Mrs. Winthrop Williams, 4917 Glendale Road, Westwood Hills; Mrs. Gilbert Wright, Malibu, Calif.; Mrs. Martha Matilda Hamilton, 333 W. Meyer Boulevard, and Mrs. Herbert A. Hedges, 6025 State Line.

Services will be at 11:00 a.m. Friday at the Melrose Methodist Church, 200 N. Bales; burial in Mount Washington Cemetery. Friends may call after 4 p.m. today at the Sheil Chapel, 6606 Independence.