POTUS #12 Zachary Taylor was born on this day 1784.

Ten Notes On Zachary Taylor

1. Zachary Taylor was 5’8″ 170 pounds. He had gray eyes and black hair.

2. Before running for the presidency Zachary Taylor had never held a political office and he had never voted in any election. He didn’t vote in his own election either. He was the first president who had never held any political office before being elected POTUS.

3. Taylor’s daughter Sarah Knox Taylor married against her father’s wishes Jefferson Davis, who would later become the President of the Confederacy. Knox died 3 months into the marriage in 1835 of malaria.

4. Zachary Taylor was a career soldier. He served 40 years in the United States Army and fought in the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War, the second Seminole War and the Mexican War. He became famous for his performance in the Mexican War at the battles of Palo Alto and the Battle of Monterrey. The nickname he got in the army was “Old Rough and Ready”

5. Zachary Taylor was the last president to own slaves while in office. Presidents who owned slaves with in or out of office- George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor,  Andrew Johnson and Ulysses Grant.

6. In the 1848 Presidential Election- President James K. Polk kept his pledge to only serve one term. Taylor decided to run as a Whig, he faced the Democrat Lewis Cass  and Free-Soil candidate and former POTUS Marty Van Buren in the general election. It was a narrow victory for war hero Taylor. Taylor 163 electoral votes to Cass with 127. Van Buren came up empty. Zachary Taylor was 64 years old when he became POTUS. His Vice Daddy would be Millard Fillmore.

7. Zachary Taylor’s wife and First Lady of the United States was Margaret Taylor. She was a recluse. There is no known photo of her that survives. She was unhappy that her husband was elected POTUS. She was a quiet, religious woman who rarely left the White House except to attend church. She would die just less than two years after her husbands death.

8. Zachary Taylor served as POTUS 16 months. On the 4th of July 1850 he celebrated the 4th by listening to speeches out in the hot sun. When he got back to the White House he ate a bowl of cherries with some ice cold milk. He became sick and 5ive days later died of cholera. Millard Fillmore was now POTUS. THE Millard Fillmore, probably the most obscure POTUS in American history.

9. There was speculation over the years that maybe Taylor had been poisoned. In 1991 they dug Zachary up, took samples of hair, fingernails and other tissue.  There was no evidence of poisoning. The way the doctors treated him gave him little hope of recovering. He was treated with ipecac,calomel, opium and quinine at 40 grains a whack and bled and blistered.

10. Taylor had a son Richard Taylor who was a Confederate General during the American Civil War. Taylor and his wife had six children, Richard  was his only son.