Benjamin Ogle Tayloe

Benjamin "Ogle" Tayloe (May 21, 1796 — February 25, 1868) was an American businessman, bon vivant, diplomat, scion of colonial tidewater gentry, and influential political activist in Washington, D.C. during the first half of the 19th century. Although he never held elective office, he was a prominent Whig and influential in presidential electoral politics in the 1840s and 1850s. Tayloe's father was Colonel John Tayloe III, one of the richest people in Virginia. Colonel Tayloe had built The Octagon House in 1800, and his great-grandfather. John Tayloe II, built the great country estate house of Mount Airy in Richmond County, Virginia, in 1762 on an estate his father, John Tayloe I inherited from his father William Tayloe (the nephew) previously known as "Tayloe's Quarter." In addition, he counted as his progenitors' such men of the tidewater gentry at Col. Thomas Addison of Oxon Hill Manor, and Benjamin Tasker Sr.

He was tutored by Samuel Hoar, a prominent lawyer and politician in the state of Massachusetts. He entered Harvard College in 1811, where his classmates included some of the most prominent Americans of the next half-century: historian Jared Sparks; jurist Theophilus Parsons; cleric and politician John G. Palfrey; Unitarian minister Convers Francis; businessman John Amory Lowell; and historian William H. Prescott. While in college during the War of 1812, he witnessed the famous battle between and . He dined with Chesapeakes captain, James Lawrence, the night before the battle.

On November 8, 1824, Tayloe married Julia Maria Dickinson of Troy, New York. In 1816 Col. Tayloe had built six two-story houses facing Pennsylvania Avenue at 14th Street NW, and in 1817 had leased them to John Tennison who ran them as a hotel. The structures served as a hotel for the next three decades, the leaseholder and name changing several times: Williamson's Mansion Hotel, Fullers American House, and the City Hotel. The sword John III and Benjamin displayed was an epee; the only child of Sarah Knowles Bolton, librarian Charles Knowles Bolton, considered that the lions were likely Ermine rather than Argent.

Later career Residence in Washington, D.C.

In 1828, Tayloe built his wife a house in Washington, D.C., directly across the street from the White House. The Tayloes did not immediately occupy their home, however. Tayloe had a strong political disagreement with the newly elected president, Andrew Jackson, and refused to move into the home. Instead, Tayloe leased the building to Thomas Swann Sr., a lawyer (and the father of Thomas Swann Jr., who became Governor of Maryland in 1866).

In 1859 Tayloe House was the scene of a murder. Philip Barton Key II was the son of Francis Scott Key and the nephew of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. In the spring of 1858, Key began having an affair with Teresa Bagioli Sickles, the wife of his friend Daniel Sickles. On February 26, 1859, Sickles learned of the affair.

As Tayloe was one of the most influential and active members of the Whig Party in the District of Columbia,

Plantation activities "Uncle" Jim Lawson, an African American born into slavery and enslaved by Benjamin Ogle Tayloe. He was moved from Maryland to the Windsor plantation in Alabama around 1845. This photo depicts him at age 94 in 1915, still working on the Tayloe estate. Tayloe purchased cotton plantations in northeast Marengo (now Hale) and southwest Perry counties between Uniontown and Selma, Alabama, in 1836. The plantation was managed by Tayloe's younger brother, Henry Augustine Tayloe, Overseer Robert Morgan earned $1,200 annually for his duties on the Benjamin Ogle Tayloe plantation, 2.4 times what most overseers in the Canebrake Region of Alabama did.

Tayloe's views on slavery were somewhat moderate in nature. He strongly (but privately) disapproved of sexually abusing slaves and miscegenation. A chance encounter led to the founding of one of the most legendary hotels in the city's history. Tayloe had become engaged to Phoebe Warren, another young woman from Troy, New York.

Tayloe's lease to Willard later generated an important case before the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1854, Tayloe leased the property again to Willard, this time for 10 years at a rate of $1,200 per year. The lease contained a provision that Willard could purchase the entire property at any time during the life of the lease for $22,500—$2,000 in "cash" down payment and another $2,000 a year plus interest thereafter until the mortgage was paid.

Later life

Tayloe married Phoebe Warren, one of his wife's friends, on April 17, 1849. He attempted to convince the Southern Democratic Party candidate, Vice President John C. Breckinridge, to withdraw his candidacy in favor of a "fusion" party that would defeat the Republican Party candidate, Abraham Lincoln. But with the outbreak of war and the loss of his Alabama and Virginia lands, Tayloe lost more than half a million dollars (about $20.3 million in inflation-adjusted 2010 dollars). and that he had the education, skill, connections, and opportunity. Tayloe and his wife were the first people to enter the Seward house after the attack, and they stayed with the stricken Secretary of State all night long.

Ancestry

Footnotes