In this month of busy-ness, it was good that my Booking It Through History: First Ladies project focused on the least known First Lady, Margaret (Peggy) Taylor. There are virtually no books or even profiles of Margaret and barely any of President Taylor since he only served sixteen months.
Each month, I’ll detail the life of the first lady and their legacy. Then I’ll share what I learned while studying them, along with ways you can travel in their footsteps through historical sites and museums. I’ll also share books, podcasts, TV shows, and websites where you can learn even more about that first lady. Read all of the way through the blog post or click on the links below to go straight to those sections.
Life
Margaret (Peggy) Smith was born on September 21, 1788 in Calvert County, Maryland to a former Revolutionary War major and wealthy tobacco planter, Walter Smith. Not much is known about her early life, but it does seem that she was sent to New York for finishing school at some point. No portraits exist of Peggy from this time (or from any other point in her life!).
She traveled to Jefferson County, Kentucky to visit her sister in 1809 where she met a young soldier, Zachary Taylor. They fell in love and married on June 21, 1810. His father gave them 324 acres of land near Louisville where Peggy soon gave birth to their first child, a daughter named Ann after her mother. They would eventually have six children, five girls and one boy, although two daughters would die in childhood.
Peggy was the quintessential military wife, moving with her husband and growing family all over the American frontier. From Indiana to Wisconsin to Florida, Peggy lived and traveled in primitive conditions to stay near her husband. Whether it was pitching a tent in the sweltering heat or starting a fire in an icy Northwestern Territory cabin, Peggy was said to be cheerful and capable. General Taylor often said Peggy was “a better soldier than I” for bearing life on the frontier. His military career continued to flourish, and he was named the first brevet major in US history by President Madison.
There were times where Peggy couldn’t stay with her husband during military campaigns, and in 1820, she and the four children went to her sister’s home in Louisiana. Malaria struck the family, killing two of her daughters and almost taking Peggy’s life. Taylor rushed to be with her because she was expected to die, and while she survived, her health remained poor for the rest of her life.
In 1832, Zachary and Peggy’s second daughter, Sarah Knox, fell in love with a young military officer, Jefferson Davis, much to her parents’ chagrin. They didn’t want their children to have the hard, nomadic life they had lived. However, Sarah Knox married Davis against her parents’ wishes. Unfortunately, she died of malaria just a month into the marriage, and Taylor refused to acknowledge Davis for years even as they served in the Mexican-American War together. Peggy became good friends with Davis’ second wife, Varina, who often visited her at the White House.
Peggy continued to travel with Taylor, and they purchased Cypress Grove, a cottage in Baton Rouge, to serve as their retirement home. However, the advent of the Mexican-American War took Taylor far away from Peggy for years. Peggy pleaded with God to bring Taylor home safely, vowing to eschew public appearances if He did. She got her wish.
White House Years
Michelin, Francis, 1809 Or , Publisher, and Francis Michelin. Zachary Taylor. Major general U.S. Army / A. Hoffmann. , ca. 1848. N.Y.: Printed & published by Fis. Michelin, 111 Nassau St., July 19. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2013645212/.
After the war ended, General Taylor, known as “Old Rough and Ready,” was sought after by both political parties to run for president. Peggy didn’t want him to run, preferring a quiet retirement on the banks of the Mississippi. She said that his candidacy was a “plot to deprive her of his society, and shorten his life by unnecessary care and responsibility.” She was right.
Zachary Taylor won the presidential election of 1848 and was the first president elected with no political experience. He traveled to the White House in January of 1849 with Peggy and his family following. Peggy kept her vow to not serve as a hostess, giving those duties to her newly married daughter, Betty Taylor Bliss, whose husband served as President Taylor’s top aide. Betty was a charming and vivacious hostess, a good conversationalist with a sense of humor. Peggy remained upstairs in the White House knitting or visiting with ever-present relatives, and she rarely left the mansion except for church services at St. John’s Episcopal Church. This led to some hurtful rumors by Washington society (one saying that she was a pipe smoker which was untrue!). She rejected all politics but did ask her husband to appoint her cousin’s husband as attorney general.
She was first lady during President Taylor’s distant cousin by marriage, Dolley Madison’s state funeral where he called her the “First Lady of the land” – where we get the title “First Lady” today. Many important political events took place while she was first lady as well, including the 1848-9 California Gold Rush and the increasingly tense debates over the expansion of slavery. She was part of a slaveholding family her whole life, including her life with President Taylor who didn’t want the expansion of slavery to California but owned over 300 slaves during his lifetime.
On July 4, 1850, President Taylor attended a ceremony to begin construction of the Washington monument in the broiling heat. He ate lots of green apples and cherries with milk and became very sick with cholera, which was rampant in the city. On Tuesday, July 9, he died at 10:35 pm with Margaret and his family gathered around him just sixteen months into his presidency. Her grief was overwhelming, and while he laid in state at the White House and had a formal funeral in Washington, she didn’t attend, staying on the second floor of the mansion with Varina Davis. She also wouldn’t allow President Taylor to be embalmed but had the casket opened several times to see him before he was taken to his burial site in Kentucky.
Margaret never recovered from her husband’s death and didn’t speak about the White House again. She died just two years later on August 14, 1852 of a fever at her daughter’s home in Pascagoula, Mississippi. She was buried beside her husband in Louisville, finally at rest with the man she loved. The Taylors were the first presidential couple to both die before their term expired.
Legacy
Peggy is the least known first lady with no portraits or photographs and hardly any letters remaining. She didn’t want the job of first lady and didn’t leave a legacy of her time in the White House.
She is best known for being a hardy military wife, one that didn’t mind the mire and muck of army camps or isolated frontier posts. With no primary sources about her life, we will never know what she truly thought.
She grew up on a plantation that had enslaved workers and spent her whole life with enslaved help. We have no way to know what she thought of the institution, but with her husband’s continued purchasing and selling of enslaved workers, she had to be aware of its horrors.
Her daughter, Betty, lost her husband and went on to marry one of Martha Washinton’s great-grandnephews. Her son became a Confederate general, and his plantation was sacked during the Civil War with most of her family’s correspondence destroyed. Due to rumors about his death, President Taylor’s body was exhumed in the 1980s to test for poisons, but it only confirmed his death from cholera.
My Time with Peggy
This was the hardest month for me in my entire project so far! With no primary sources and relatively little written about even President Taylor, there was not much for me to research. I feel sad for Peggy, that she is lost to history, but I believe that’s how she would have liked it.
Travels with Peggy
Peggy traveled all over the American frontier but there are just a few sites dedicated to her or her husband.
Kentucky:
Zachary Taylor National Cemetery, Louisville
This is the burial site for Zachary and Margaret near where they met and married.
Zachary Taylor’s childhood home, Louisville
A nearby historical marker is all that remains of Taylor’s childhood home, near the site where he and Peggy started their married life and had their first child.
Louisiana:
Zachary Taylor Home Site, Baton Rouge
This is the location of Peggy’s beloved cottage on the Mississippi.
St. James Episcopal Church, Baton Rouge
This is the church Peggy helped to found in the early 1840s.
Mississippi:
President Zachary Taylor’s Summer Home Site, Pascagoula
Location of the home where Peggy died in 1852.
Maryland:
St. Leonard Garden of Remembrance, Calvert County
In Peggy’s birth county, there is a garden dedicated to her.
Indiana:
Vincennes Fort Knox II, Vincennes
This is one of the forts where Peggy lived during Zachary’s military life. There is a historical marker about women at the fort.
Grouseland, Vincennes
Home to William Henry Harrison, there is a historical marker here denoting the birthplace of Peggy’s second daughter, Sarah Knox.
Virginia:
James Madison Museum, Orange
Small museum that has some artifacts from the 12th president who was born nearby, including his bed!
To Learn More
Books to Read:
There are no books written about Peggy and almost none written about President Taylor.
All links are Amazon affiliate links. You can also purchase the books through my affiliate link to Bookshop.org which supports independent bookstores.
Nonfiction:
Zachary Taylor: The American Presidents Series: The 12th President, 1849-1850 by John S. D. Eisenhower
This short biography contains the barest of details about Peggy but is the only real biography written about President Taylor.
Fiction:
I tried finding a book set in the short time period of Taylor’s presidency.
Bitter Passage by Elizabeth Buechner Morris
I stumbled across this sad story when searching for books set in 1849. I was captivated by the hard, heart-rending story of German immigrant, Frida, who followers her domineering husband from Germany to New York City to California on the search for gold. This book will make you hurt and cry but will teach you so much about life as a woman on the frontier, much like Peggy Taylor had to endure. I was surprised how much I learned!
Podcasts
Here’s Where It Gets Interesting: The Nomadic Life of Army Wife Margaret Taylor
TV Show
C-SPAN First Ladies: Influence and Image
Websites
White House Historical Association
- Ornaments: The 1995 ornament in honor of President Taylor reflects on the ceremony for the Washington Monument in 1850.
Margaret Taylor was a strong and tenacious frontierswoman who valued her family and faith, not letting politics or society get in her way. It’s too bad we don’t have more information to get to know the real Peggy.
