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married Sarah Strother, a young lady of highly respectable connexions, then in her twentieth year. At this time he held a colonel's commission

* For part of the facts mentioned in this sketch, we are indebted to Fry's Life of General Tayfor; also to Montgomery's memoir of the same.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

OF

ZACHARY TAYLOR.

VIRGINIA, the "Ancient Dominion" of the British American colonies, has obtained also the name of the "Mother of Presidents," among the states; it being the native state of no less than seven of the presidents of the United States, including ZACHARY TAYLOR, the twelfth on the list of those who have filled that high station. It is worthy of remark, that three of these Virginians have been elected without the aid of the electoral votes of their native state.

The family of the Taylors of Virginia, to which the twelfth president belongs, is honorably distinguished in the annals of the colony and the state. Its ancestors of the same name emigrated from England, with other friends of liberty, and settled in the southeastern part of the colony of Virginia in the year 1692. Among the different branches and connexions of the family are the Madisons, Lees, Barbours, Pendletons, Conways, Taliaferos, Hunts, Gaineses, and others, whose public services and patriotism, during more than a century, are commemorated in colonial and national history.

Richard Taylor, the father of General Zachary Taylor, was born in Virginia, on the 22d of March, 1744. He received a plain but solid education, and in boyhood evinced the bold and adventurous spirit which afterward led him to seek a home in the western wilderness. When still a youth, he made a journey to Kentucky, and thence to the banks of the Mississippi, surveying the country as far as Natchez, and returning on foot, without guide or companion, through pathless woods, inhabited only by savages and wild beasts, to his father's house in Virginia.*

At the age of thirty-five, on the 20th of August, 1779, Richard Taylor married Sarah Strother, a young lady of highly respectable connexions, then in her twentieth year. At this time he held a colonel's commission For part of the facts mentioned in this sketch, we are indebted to Fry's Life of General Taylor; also to Montgomery's memoir of the same.

in the Virginia line, and served with zeal and valor throughout the revolutionary war. He was engaged in several of the most important battles of that war, particularly in the brilliant achievement of Trenton, where he rendered distinguished and valuable aid to General Washington.

Five sons and three daughters were the offspring of the marriage of Colonel Richard Taylor-the first child born in 1781. His third son, ZACHARY TAYLOR, the subject of this memoir, was born in Orange county, Virginia, on the 24th of November, 1784. In the following summer his father fulfilled his long-cherished intention of emigrating to Kentucky, only ten years after the first habitation of a white man had been erected in the vast region between the western boundary of Virginia and the Mississippi. In the emigration of Colonel Richard Taylor to this country, he had been preceded by his brother Hancock Taylor, a brave and intelligent man, who lost his life by the Indians while engaged in surveying lands in the Ohio valley. He is said to have selected for his farm the site of the present city of Louisville.

The early years of Zachary Taylor were passed under the guidance of such men, and under such circumstances for the development of a bold spirit and active intellect. His father had settled in Jefferson county, near Louisville, where he acquired a large estate by his industry and thrift, and honorable consideration by his intelligence, bravery, and patriotism. As Louisville rose into importance, his own fortune and local distinction increased. He received from President Washington a commission as collector of that port, New Orleans being then a Spanish possession. Richard Taylor was also one of the framers of the constitution of Kentucky; represented Jefferson county for many years in both branches. of the legislature, and was a member of the electoral colleges which voted for Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Clay. Among the politicians of Kentucky he is remembered as one of the few men of the "Old Court party" who could be elected from Jefferson county during the excitement of the old and new court question. He died on his plantation, near Louisville, leaving to survive him three sons and three daughters, of whom one son and two daughters have since died. His two surviving sons,.Zachary and Joseph, have both chosen a military profession, as did their brother Hancock, who died in 1808.

One of the chief cares of Colonel Taylor was the education of his children; but during the first ten or fifteen years of his residence in Kentucky, the sparseness of the population, and the exposure of the inhabitants to Indian hostilities, made the accomplishment of his purpose very difficult. A school for the rudiments of English merely was established in his neighborhood by Elisha Ayres, a native of Connecticut, who afterward returned to that state, and now resides, at the advanced age of fourscore years, at Preston, near Norwich. To Mr. Ayres, as his teacher, was Zachary Taylor sent in his early years, to receive such instruction as

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