Zachary Taylor

Something great about this quest to find all the dead presidents is that it gives me an excuse to take road trips to parts of the US I wouldn’t otherwise be visiting. And with each trip I really don’t know what I’ll find when I get to my destination. I do some research as to where I’m headed, but I don’t know for sure what I’ll find (it would take some of the fun out of it if I read about others’ experiences with the same quest – maybe when I’m done I’ll hunt some of them down [on the web, not literally]). Zachary Taylor is a case in point. I knew I was looking for a military cemetery in Louisville, KY. What I didn’t know was that it’s a very small cemetery in a suburban neighborhood. The cemetery had started as the Taylor family plot, and then in 1920’s the Taylor family convinced the federal government to take it over as a veteran’s cemetery.The government does not own the land, but the cemetery is maintained by the veterans’ administration.

The only non-military graves are Taylor family, and it seems like a lot of the military headstones are for men who died in combat and whose bodies hadn’t been reclaimed. Another interesting thing is that in the Taylor family plot is that two of the women are buried as “consorts” to men, not wives – I’m going to have to do some more research on that. I’m also going to have to do some research on some of the veterans buried there; a lot of the stones simply list the names of several men with a date. Usually when you see more than one person on a stone they are either related (which obviously these men are not) or they died together.

Zachary Taylor (1784-1850) was the twelfth president of the US and died in office. Known as “Old Rough and Ready” he was a career soldier who spent time in the Mexican War and wars against the Indians in the West. More of a soldier than a politician he didn’t negotiate with the Southern States when they threatened to secede:

“He told them that if necessary to enforce the laws, he personally would lead the Army. Persons 'taken in rebellion against the Union, he would hang ... with less reluctance than he had hanged deserters and spies in Mexico.'"

Strangely, Taylor said that in 1849, the southern states didn’t actually secede until after Lincoln was elected in 1860 (three presidents later).

After attending 4^th of July celebrations he fell ill and died five days later. There is debate as to what he actually died from, most sources just list “illness”. Some theories include: heatstroke, from spending a day outside in the hot July sun; cholera, from water he drank directly from a pitcher at a reception that day; food poisoning, from the same reception; typhoid fever; and assassination by arsenic poisoning (his body was exhumed in 1991 to solve the mystery of his death and large quantities of arsenic were found).

In the Louisville cemetery Zachary Taylor has a monument, a mausoleum and a tomb in the side of a hill where apparently his body had been held temporarily (much like Lincoln). His monument celebrates his military background more that his presidency. In the mausoleum there are marble sarcophagi for him and his wife, Margaret.