The First Ladies: Margaret (Peggy) Taylor
Margaret (Peggy) Taylor was among the least known of first ladies, and that's understandable, given that her husband died less than two years into his term as President. But I wondered what kind of a woman would have paired up with Old Rough and Ready, hence her selection for inclusion into this month's look at the first ladies.
She was born Margaret Mackall Smith on September 21, 1788. Her father was Major Walter Smith, a Calvert County Maryland tobacco planter and a major in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Her mother was Ann Hance Mackall, also from Calvert County. Margaret, or Peggy as she was called, was the youngest of seven children. She had three older brother and three older sisters. Her sister Sarah married into the maternal family of First Lady Louisa Catherine Adams, whose father was also from Maryland.
Not much is known of Peggy's early life. She was known to be a childhood acquaintance of Nelly Custis, the granddaughter of Martha Washington. She was only 10 years old when her mother died. Her aunt Priscilla married Robert Bowie, who was three times Governor of Maryland. Her father died when she was 16 years old, and she moved to Louisville, Kentucky to live with her next oldest sibling, her sister MaryAnne, who was married to Samuel Chew - whose own family was also a prominent one in Maryland. Five years later, in Louisville, she was introduced to Zachary Taylor by Dr. Alexander Duke, an old Smith family friend, also from Calvert County, Maryland. At age 21 Peggy married 25 year old Lieutenant Taylor at the double log-house home of her sister and brother-in-law, Mary Anne and Samuel Chew.
The Taylors had five children: Sarah Knox Taylor Davis (who was the first wife of Jefferson Davis); Anne Margaret Mackall Taylor Wood, Octavia Pannel Taylor (who died at age four), Margaret Smith Taylor (who died at age 15 months); Mary Elizabeth "Betty" Taylor Bliss Dandridge, and Richard Taylor.
For almost forty years, Peggy Taylor had an itinerant life, traveling around the frontier regions of the United States with her husband, directed by his U.S. Army assignments. Zachary Taylor rose to Major (1812-1814), Colonel during the Black Hawk War in 1832, Brigadier General during the Seminole War, 1836-1837, and Major General of the Mexican War, 1845-1847. Peggy would live in forts, tents, log cabins, from the Florida Everglades, to the northern garrisons at Fort, Crawford in present-day Wisconsin to Jefferson Barracks in Missouri. One of her early trips to rejoin her husband was by horse back, after visiting her mother's family, from Calvert County, Maryland to Kentucky. In 1820, however, while at Bayou Sara, Louisiana, she lost two of her five daughters, three-year old Octavia, and one-year old Margaret. Peggy also became very ill and the scant descriptions of her in her husband's correspondence to family members from that point on often refer to her "delicate" health.
Peggy gave birth to two more children, and insisted on having them sent out of the frontier once they were older, to be raised with relatives in Louisville, Kentucky. She did not want to expose them to the disease and other hardships more readily encountered in the frontier forts and camps where she continued to live with her husband.
On 17 June, 1835, Sarah Taylor married Lieutenant Jefferson Davis at the Louisville, Kentucky home of her father's sister. The marriage was not an elopement, but it was not sanctioned by Zachary Taylor. Letters to Peggy Taylor, however, indicate that Sarah had the direction of her mother, who was disappointed not to be at the ceremony. The young couple moved to the groom's property on his brother's plantation. There Sarah Taylor Davis and Jefferson Davis both contracted malaria. Jefferson Davis survived, but Sarah died on 15 September. Peggy Taylor was devastated by the loss. Previously on friendly terms with Davis, she refused to acknowledge him for many years.
In 1837, Taylor was requested leave, so he and Peggy could visit their daughtera Ann in Kentucky and Betty in Philadelphia. However, with the Seminole Indian battles in Florida, he was ordered to Fort Brooke in Tampa. Once hostilities were quelled, Peggy went to Tampa where she served as a nurse in the army hospital
Finally, in 1838, PeggyTaylor was able to have a break from army life when her husband was promoted and given his leave. They sailed to Pensacola, Florida, then to New Orleans. Then they went to Washington, D.C., likely their first visit to the White House, to consult with President Martin Van Buren. From the capital, they went to Philadelphia where they were finally rejoined with their daughter Betty, whom they had not seen for several years.
Two years later, Taylor was posted to Baton Rouge. Here Peggy decided to make a home. A relatively old building remaining from the Spanish commandant there, it sat overlooking the Mississippi River and was shaded by moss trees. She now preferred living in Baton Rouge, even when separated from her husband.
In 1845, Taylor was called to command the Army and secure U.S. positioning near the Rio Grande in what would become known as the Mexican War. For their first time in their marriage Peggy Taylor decided not to join him at the front. She received visits from her daughter Ann, now married to a U.S. Army surgeon, Robert Wood (who served with Taylor) and her four grandchildren. At the Baton Rouge military base, she took a room in the garrison and turned it into a chapel. Realizing that there was no permanent Protestant church of any kind in the region, Peggy Taylor used her status as the wife of the great Mexican War general to rally area citizens in helping to establish the Episcopalian parish and church of St. James. She was at her husband's side when the city of New Orleans celebrated him with parades and tributes as the great hero of the Mexican War.
Several anecdotes suggest that Peggy Taylor vigorously protested her husband's nomination as the Whig candidate for president in 1848. He enjoyed telling people that she was praying that his opponent would win the presidency. Taylor also told the story of his meeting a man on a steamboat who did not know his identity. He asked the man what candidate he supported. The man said "Taylor," then asked the actual candidate if he was voting for the general as well. No, said Taylor, because he knew for a fact that the general's wife was against it. But despite her opposition, Peggy Taylor was in attendance at the 1849 Inauguration ceremony of her husband, surrounded by some of the family. She turned down an invitation from the outgoing presidential couple, the Polks, to join her husband, family members and other Whig supporters at a White House dinner the night before the ceremony. She also did not appear at the two Inaugural Balls, remaining instead in her Willard Hotel suite with her grandchildren.
During her brief tenure as a president's wife living in the White House, there seems to have been some sort of estrangement between her son Dick and the President, and the young man was not encouraged to visit the White House. Her daughter Ann and grandchildren John, Bob, Sarah and Anna, lived in nearby Baltimore and visited the White House often. Her daughter Betty had wed Colonel William Wallace Bliss, General Taylor's aide, and they lived in the mansion with her parents, he continuing his work but now as the president's aide.
It is unlikely that Peggy took any interest in public affairs. At an 1849 White House dinner, Varina Davis (the second wife of Jefferson Davis with whom the Taylors had by then reconciled) records that Taylor told her husband, "You know my wife was as much of a soldier as I was." Peggy Taylor was especially close with her first cousin, Mary Bowie, who had married the prominent attorney and U.S. Senator from Maryland, Reverdy Johnson, also of the Whig Party. It was said to be upon the persistent influence of Peggy Taylor that her husband appointed Johnson as Attorney General. She is also said to have developed a friendship with Whig Senator Daniel Webster, who visited frequently. She made and effort to recognize and entertain those Whig leaders who had first pushed for Taylor's candidacy and felt initially ignored or treated with ingratitude.
Peggy Taylor took charge of the well-being of Zachary Taylor as she always had, looking after his diet, health and apparently an increasingly appropriate wardrobe, he having earned a reputation as something of a sloppy dresser. But she refused to preside over any public functions as hostess. That was a task she gladly passed to her popular and young daughter, known to the general public and the press as "Miss Betty."
Peggy Taylor maintained a sense of anonymity for a fist lady. She was rarely recognized or acknowledged by the general public. Standing among a larger group of visiting women near the President, her presence was unnoticed, giving her the pleasure of seeing how reverently the public responded to her beloved husband. False rumors began to circulate among the capital society leaders that Mrs. Taylor was something of a crude recluse from the frontier who smoked a corncob pipe and was kept hidden by her mortified family in the attic. Ironically, any sort of smoke made her "actively ill," according to her grandson.
Peggy Taylor and her daughter Betty were at the bedside of the President when, after a sudden gastric illness of five days, he died on July 9, 1850. Peggy Taylor became hysterical and repeated that he had survived worse threats to his life on the battlefield and in the primitive forts where they had lived. She begged him not to leave her and upon his death insisted that the ice preserving his body be removed on three occasions just so she could look upon his face one more time. She was unable to attend his funeral in the East Room. Instead, according to Varina Davis, she listened to the funeral dirges and drum marches lying upstairs on her bed, shaking and sobbing in shock.
Peggy Taylor had never sat for a portrait, suggesting a painting. However, in the early 20th century an engraving appeared that was claimed to be of her; it was drawn by an artist who did a series of such engravings of earlier First Ladies based on other images loaned to him for that purpose from descendants. In 1998, an early photograph that appears to be the original image from which the engraving was copied was purchased by a private collector in Washington, D.C. The apparent photograph of Peggy Taylor was part of a group of daugerotype and other images of Mexican War era figures that originated from a Winchester, Virginia collection.
Peggy Taylor left the White House with her daughter Ann Wood and her family, and lived with them for three months in Baltimore. She then went with her two daughters to New Orleans, where they met up with her son. Peggy Taylor inherited an ample estate, including five slaves. She made no public appearances or remarks in retirement. She initially returned to live with the Blisses in Kentucky, but later moved to live with her son Dick in East Pascagoula, Mississippi. Her only known public appearance as a widow was at Dick's wedding in 1851. All of the Taylor family's personal correspondence was stored at her last home which was burned by Union troops during the Civil War.
Peggy Taylor died at the age of 63 in East Pascagoula , Mississippi on August 14, 1852. She is buried at the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery in Louisville , Kentucky.
She was born Margaret Mackall Smith on September 21, 1788. Her father was Major Walter Smith, a Calvert County Maryland tobacco planter and a major in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Her mother was Ann Hance Mackall, also from Calvert County. Margaret, or Peggy as she was called, was the youngest of seven children. She had three older brother and three older sisters. Her sister Sarah married into the maternal family of First Lady Louisa Catherine Adams, whose father was also from Maryland.
Not much is known of Peggy's early life. She was known to be a childhood acquaintance of Nelly Custis, the granddaughter of Martha Washington. She was only 10 years old when her mother died. Her aunt Priscilla married Robert Bowie, who was three times Governor of Maryland. Her father died when she was 16 years old, and she moved to Louisville, Kentucky to live with her next oldest sibling, her sister MaryAnne, who was married to Samuel Chew - whose own family was also a prominent one in Maryland. Five years later, in Louisville, she was introduced to Zachary Taylor by Dr. Alexander Duke, an old Smith family friend, also from Calvert County, Maryland. At age 21 Peggy married 25 year old Lieutenant Taylor at the double log-house home of her sister and brother-in-law, Mary Anne and Samuel Chew.
The Taylors had five children: Sarah Knox Taylor Davis (who was the first wife of Jefferson Davis); Anne Margaret Mackall Taylor Wood, Octavia Pannel Taylor (who died at age four), Margaret Smith Taylor (who died at age 15 months); Mary Elizabeth "Betty" Taylor Bliss Dandridge, and Richard Taylor.
For almost forty years, Peggy Taylor had an itinerant life, traveling around the frontier regions of the United States with her husband, directed by his U.S. Army assignments. Zachary Taylor rose to Major (1812-1814), Colonel during the Black Hawk War in 1832, Brigadier General during the Seminole War, 1836-1837, and Major General of the Mexican War, 1845-1847. Peggy would live in forts, tents, log cabins, from the Florida Everglades, to the northern garrisons at Fort, Crawford in present-day Wisconsin to Jefferson Barracks in Missouri. One of her early trips to rejoin her husband was by horse back, after visiting her mother's family, from Calvert County, Maryland to Kentucky. In 1820, however, while at Bayou Sara, Louisiana, she lost two of her five daughters, three-year old Octavia, and one-year old Margaret. Peggy also became very ill and the scant descriptions of her in her husband's correspondence to family members from that point on often refer to her "delicate" health.
Peggy gave birth to two more children, and insisted on having them sent out of the frontier once they were older, to be raised with relatives in Louisville, Kentucky. She did not want to expose them to the disease and other hardships more readily encountered in the frontier forts and camps where she continued to live with her husband.
On 17 June, 1835, Sarah Taylor married Lieutenant Jefferson Davis at the Louisville, Kentucky home of her father's sister. The marriage was not an elopement, but it was not sanctioned by Zachary Taylor. Letters to Peggy Taylor, however, indicate that Sarah had the direction of her mother, who was disappointed not to be at the ceremony. The young couple moved to the groom's property on his brother's plantation. There Sarah Taylor Davis and Jefferson Davis both contracted malaria. Jefferson Davis survived, but Sarah died on 15 September. Peggy Taylor was devastated by the loss. Previously on friendly terms with Davis, she refused to acknowledge him for many years.
In 1837, Taylor was requested leave, so he and Peggy could visit their daughtera Ann in Kentucky and Betty in Philadelphia. However, with the Seminole Indian battles in Florida, he was ordered to Fort Brooke in Tampa. Once hostilities were quelled, Peggy went to Tampa where she served as a nurse in the army hospital
Finally, in 1838, PeggyTaylor was able to have a break from army life when her husband was promoted and given his leave. They sailed to Pensacola, Florida, then to New Orleans. Then they went to Washington, D.C., likely their first visit to the White House, to consult with President Martin Van Buren. From the capital, they went to Philadelphia where they were finally rejoined with their daughter Betty, whom they had not seen for several years.
Two years later, Taylor was posted to Baton Rouge. Here Peggy decided to make a home. A relatively old building remaining from the Spanish commandant there, it sat overlooking the Mississippi River and was shaded by moss trees. She now preferred living in Baton Rouge, even when separated from her husband.
In 1845, Taylor was called to command the Army and secure U.S. positioning near the Rio Grande in what would become known as the Mexican War. For their first time in their marriage Peggy Taylor decided not to join him at the front. She received visits from her daughter Ann, now married to a U.S. Army surgeon, Robert Wood (who served with Taylor) and her four grandchildren. At the Baton Rouge military base, she took a room in the garrison and turned it into a chapel. Realizing that there was no permanent Protestant church of any kind in the region, Peggy Taylor used her status as the wife of the great Mexican War general to rally area citizens in helping to establish the Episcopalian parish and church of St. James. She was at her husband's side when the city of New Orleans celebrated him with parades and tributes as the great hero of the Mexican War.
Several anecdotes suggest that Peggy Taylor vigorously protested her husband's nomination as the Whig candidate for president in 1848. He enjoyed telling people that she was praying that his opponent would win the presidency. Taylor also told the story of his meeting a man on a steamboat who did not know his identity. He asked the man what candidate he supported. The man said "Taylor," then asked the actual candidate if he was voting for the general as well. No, said Taylor, because he knew for a fact that the general's wife was against it. But despite her opposition, Peggy Taylor was in attendance at the 1849 Inauguration ceremony of her husband, surrounded by some of the family. She turned down an invitation from the outgoing presidential couple, the Polks, to join her husband, family members and other Whig supporters at a White House dinner the night before the ceremony. She also did not appear at the two Inaugural Balls, remaining instead in her Willard Hotel suite with her grandchildren.
During her brief tenure as a president's wife living in the White House, there seems to have been some sort of estrangement between her son Dick and the President, and the young man was not encouraged to visit the White House. Her daughter Ann and grandchildren John, Bob, Sarah and Anna, lived in nearby Baltimore and visited the White House often. Her daughter Betty had wed Colonel William Wallace Bliss, General Taylor's aide, and they lived in the mansion with her parents, he continuing his work but now as the president's aide.
It is unlikely that Peggy took any interest in public affairs. At an 1849 White House dinner, Varina Davis (the second wife of Jefferson Davis with whom the Taylors had by then reconciled) records that Taylor told her husband, "You know my wife was as much of a soldier as I was." Peggy Taylor was especially close with her first cousin, Mary Bowie, who had married the prominent attorney and U.S. Senator from Maryland, Reverdy Johnson, also of the Whig Party. It was said to be upon the persistent influence of Peggy Taylor that her husband appointed Johnson as Attorney General. She is also said to have developed a friendship with Whig Senator Daniel Webster, who visited frequently. She made and effort to recognize and entertain those Whig leaders who had first pushed for Taylor's candidacy and felt initially ignored or treated with ingratitude.
Peggy Taylor took charge of the well-being of Zachary Taylor as she always had, looking after his diet, health and apparently an increasingly appropriate wardrobe, he having earned a reputation as something of a sloppy dresser. But she refused to preside over any public functions as hostess. That was a task she gladly passed to her popular and young daughter, known to the general public and the press as "Miss Betty."
Peggy Taylor maintained a sense of anonymity for a fist lady. She was rarely recognized or acknowledged by the general public. Standing among a larger group of visiting women near the President, her presence was unnoticed, giving her the pleasure of seeing how reverently the public responded to her beloved husband. False rumors began to circulate among the capital society leaders that Mrs. Taylor was something of a crude recluse from the frontier who smoked a corncob pipe and was kept hidden by her mortified family in the attic. Ironically, any sort of smoke made her "actively ill," according to her grandson.
Peggy Taylor and her daughter Betty were at the bedside of the President when, after a sudden gastric illness of five days, he died on July 9, 1850. Peggy Taylor became hysterical and repeated that he had survived worse threats to his life on the battlefield and in the primitive forts where they had lived. She begged him not to leave her and upon his death insisted that the ice preserving his body be removed on three occasions just so she could look upon his face one more time. She was unable to attend his funeral in the East Room. Instead, according to Varina Davis, she listened to the funeral dirges and drum marches lying upstairs on her bed, shaking and sobbing in shock.
Peggy Taylor had never sat for a portrait, suggesting a painting. However, in the early 20th century an engraving appeared that was claimed to be of her; it was drawn by an artist who did a series of such engravings of earlier First Ladies based on other images loaned to him for that purpose from descendants. In 1998, an early photograph that appears to be the original image from which the engraving was copied was purchased by a private collector in Washington, D.C. The apparent photograph of Peggy Taylor was part of a group of daugerotype and other images of Mexican War era figures that originated from a Winchester, Virginia collection.
Peggy Taylor left the White House with her daughter Ann Wood and her family, and lived with them for three months in Baltimore. She then went with her two daughters to New Orleans, where they met up with her son. Peggy Taylor inherited an ample estate, including five slaves. She made no public appearances or remarks in retirement. She initially returned to live with the Blisses in Kentucky, but later moved to live with her son Dick in East Pascagoula, Mississippi. Her only known public appearance as a widow was at Dick's wedding in 1851. All of the Taylor family's personal correspondence was stored at her last home which was burned by Union troops during the Civil War.
Peggy Taylor died at the age of 63 in East Pascagoula , Mississippi on August 14, 1852. She is buried at the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery in Louisville , Kentucky.