First Ladies of the United States: Margaret Taylor

Margaret Mackall Smith was born on September 21, 1788, to Walter and Ann Mackall Smith, wealthy planters in Calvert County, Maryland. When she was 21, she traveled to Kentucky to visit a married sister, and there she met army lieutenant Zachary Taylor. They were married the following year, on June 21, 1810, in a log house.

The Taylors moved from one army post to the next, often enduring long periods of separation. In relatively primitive conditions, Margaret gave birth to five daughters and one son. In 1820, two of her daughters died from bilious fever in Bayou Sara, Louisiana. Margaret herself suffered an illness serious enough that Zachary Taylor received a dispatch informing him of his wife's impending death. After her recovery, the older children were sent east to be educated. Despite this nomadic life, their surviving daughters married army men, and their son, Richard, became a lieutenant general in the Confederate army. (Daughter Sarah Knox Taylor married Lieutenant Jefferson Davis but died soon afterward from malarial fever.)...

From 1849 to 1857, three very different women from separate regions of the country served successively as first lady during the presidential administrations of their husbands. Margaret Mackall Smith Taylor (1788–1852) was the wife of career soldier and Louisiana plantation owner Zachary Taylor (1784–1850), who died just sixteen months after taking office. Abigail Powers Fillmore (1798–1853), a former schoolteacher, was married to New York lawyer and former Congressman Millard Fillmore (1800–1874), Taylor's vice president and successor. Jane Means Appleton Pierce (1806–1863), a New Hampshire gentlewoman, was wedded to attorney and former US Senator Franklin Pierce (1804–1869), who served one full term as president...