Sarah Knox Taylor

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sarah Knox Taylor

Sarah Knox Taylor (born March 6, 1814 in Vincennes , Indiana , † September 15, 1835 in St. Francisville , Louisiana ) was the daughter of General Zachary Taylor , later President of the United States , and Margaret Taylor and Jefferson Davis , the later President of the Confederate States of America , married.

While living in Prairie du Chien , Wisconsin , where her father was in command of Fort Crawford and fought in the Black Hawk War , Sarah met and fell in love with her father's second in command, Jefferson Davis. Davis had recently graduated from the United States Military Academy and was a lieutenant at the time.

Taylor admired Davis for his skills as a soldier, but was against a romantic relationship between the two. He and his wife, whose older daughter had married military doctor Robert C. Wood and lived in an abandoned outpost with three young children, believed that life on the front lines was too hard for Sarah.

At Taylor's request, Davis left the Army and married Sarah Knox Taylor on June 17, 1835, at her aunt's house near Louisville , Kentucky . The two newlyweds contracted malaria and Sarah died three months later in Louisiana at his sister's home.

Davis was devastated by the death of his young wife, as were her parents. Her death caused a rift between Davis and the two of them for years. In 1845 they finally came together again, through a chance meeting between Davis and Taylor on a Mississippi steamer . To recover from his own illness and the loss of his wife, Davis sailed to Havana and then to New York . In 1836 he retired to the Brierfield Plantation in Warren County , Mississippi .

Davis remarried in 1845 and served under Taylor in the Mexican-American War with honors at the Battle of Buena Vista . He later became Senator from Mississippi, Secretary of War , and finally, in 1861, President of the Confederate States of America.

literature

  • The North Carolina booklet: Oct. 1920, Jan. - Apr. 1921, vol. XX, nos. 2,3,4. ; Raleigh: Daughters of the Revolution, North Carolina Society, 1921. OCLC 36894682

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Taylor, Sarah Knox
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Davis, Sarah Knox Taylor (married name); Knoxie (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION first wife of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America (1861–1865)
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1814
PLACE OF BIRTH Vincennes , Indiana
DATE OF DEATH September 15, 1835
Place of death St. Francisville , Louisiana