He was the son of John and Nancy Roye, freed African-American slaves who had moved to Ohio from Kentucky and bought a property in Newark.

[8] In 1857, Roye purchased the brig Eusebia for the purposes of conducting a trading business between Monrovia and New York City.

Conditions worsened, the cost of imports was far greater than the income generated by exports of its commodity crops of coffee, rice, palm oil, sugarcane, and timber.

In 1871, Roye tasked the speaker of the House of Representatives, William Spencer Anderson, with negotiating a new loan from British financiers.

Anderson secured $500,000 under strict terms from the British consul-general, David Chinery, but was heavily criticised and eventually arrested.

His unpopular loans with Britain as well as fears from the Republican Party that he was planning to cancel the upcoming presidential election were among the reasons for his forced removal.

[citation needed] The portrait of President Roye in the gallery of the Presidential Mansion in Monrovia notes his date of death as February 11, 1872.