| Notes |
- Early life
Zachary Taylor was born on a farm[2] on November 24, 1784, in Orange County, Virginia, to a prominent family of planters. He was the youngest of three sons in a family of nine children. His mother was Sarah Strother Taylor, and his father, Richard Taylor, had served with George Washington during the American Revolution. Taylor was a descendant of Elder William Brewster, the Pilgrim colonist leader and spiritual elder of the Plymouth Colony, and passenger aboard the Mayflower and one of the signers of the Mayflower Compact; Isaac Allerton Jr.,the son of Mayflower Pilgrim Isaac Allerton and Fear Brewster. He was a 1650 graduate of Harvard College and was a merchant in Colonial America; first in business with his father in New England, and after his father's death, in Virginia. He was a Burgess for Northumberland County and a Councillor of Virginia. He became a member of the Virginia militia and ultimately rose to the rank of colonel; James Madison was Taylor's second cousin, and both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Robert E. Lee were kinsmen.[17] During his youth, he lived on the frontier in Louisville, Kentucky, residing in a small cabin in a wood during most of his childhood, before moving to a brick house as a result of his family's increased prosperity. He shared the house with seven brothers and sisters, and his father owned 10,000 acres (40 km2), town lots in Louisville, and twenty-six slaves by 1800. Since there were no schools on the Kentucky frontier, Taylor had only a basic education growing up, provided by tutors his father hired from time to time. He was reportedly a poor student; his handwriting, spelling, and grammar were described as "crude and unrefined throughout his life." When Taylor was older, he decided to join the military.
Personal life
In 1810, Taylor wed Margaret Smith, and they would have six children of whom the only son, Richard, would become a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army. One of Taylor's daughters, Sarah Knox Taylor, decided to marry in 1835 Jefferson Davis, the future President of the Confederate States of America, who at that time was a lieutenant. Taylor did not wish Sarah to marry him, and Taylor and Davis would not be reconciled until 1847 at the Battle of Buena Vista, where Davis distinguished himself as a colonel. Sarah had died in 1835, three months into the marriage. Another of Taylor's daughters, Margaret Anne, died of liver failure at age 33. Around 1841, Aria Taylor established a home at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and gained a large plantation and a great number of slaves.
Death
Taylor's mausoleum at Zachary Taylor National CemeteryThe true cause of Zachary Taylor's premature death is not fully established.[32] On July 4, 1850, after watching a groundbreaking ceremony for the Washington Monument during the Independene Day celebration, Taylor sought refuge from the oppressive heat by consuming a pitcher of milk and a bowl of cherries.[33]} At about 10:00 in the morning on July 9, 1850, very ill, Taylor called his wife to him and asked her not to weep, saying: "I have always done my duty, I am ready to die. My only regret is for the friends I leave behind me." Upon his sudden death on July 9, the cause was listed as gastroenteritis.[34] He was interred in the Public Vault (built in 1835 to hold remains of notables until either the gravesite could be prepared or transportation arranged to another city) of the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. from July 13, 1850 to October 25, 1850. Taylor was then transported to the Taylor Family plot where his parents are buried, on the old Taylor homestead estate known as 'Springfield'. In 1883, the Commonwealth of Kentucky placed a fifty foot monument near Zachary Taylor's grave. It is topped by a life-sized statue of Zachary Taylor.
By the 1920s, the Taylor family initiated the effort to turn the Taylor burial grounds into a national cemetery. The Commonwealth of Kentucky donated two pieces of land for the project, turning the half-acre Taylor family cemetery into 16 acres (65,000 m2). There, buried in the Taylor family plot, Zachary Taylor and his wife (who died in 1852) remained, until he and his wife were moved to their final resting place on May 6, 1926 in the newly commissioned Taylor mausoleum (made of limestone with a granite base, with a marble interior), nearby. Today, President Taylor and wife Margaret rest in the mausoleum in Louisville, Kentucky, at what is now the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery.
(Wikipedia)
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1784 - 1850 (65 years)
