Through all these trying circumstances Mrs. Taylor, by her good sense, her modesty, her uncomplaining spirit, her faculty of adding to the comforts and surroundings of her husband’s life, filled the measure of her duty, and set an example of the true woman, especially a soldier’s wife, that her sex for all time can admire and point to as worthy of imitation. Her domestic duties, so far as they related to the comfort of her family, she would never intentionally abandon for a single day to menial hands. Especially was she careful in the preparation of the food for the table, and however simple the meal might be, she saw that the material was carefully prepared. And this home training General Taylor displayed when in Northern Mexico, away from his domestic care; for while he was indifferent to a degree about luxuries, yet what he did eat, he persisted in having carefully selected and prepared with due regard to healthfulness; and his tent was ever a model of neatness and rude comfort. Mrs. Taylor’s maiden name was Margaret Smith. She was born in Maryland, and came of a family identified for their substantial qualities which distinguished intelligent agriculturists. She received such an education as was at the command of female pupils in the beginning of the century. An education which considered the practical, rather than the intellectual, and to this plane of her school life she was trained with special care in all the accomplishments of domestic duties. “Maryland housekeeping” was for years in the southwest, and is still among the “old settlers,” a complimentary remark, if applied to a lady from any part of the country, so excellent was considered the housewives’ work of those who learned their duties on the tidewaters of the Chesapeake Bay, and among those examples of domestic perfection in her State, Mrs. Taylor was eminent. And to be more than this—to make her home happy—she evidently had no ambition. Marrying an officer of the United States army, who was born in Kentucky, and was appointed from private life, her husband had no associations that took him to the North, which, independent of official opportunities, are increased by a student’s career at West Point. “Captain Taylor” was therefore, from the beginning of his public life, confined to the frontiers, and was known as one of the “hard-working,” and “fighting officers.” His boyhood days were made up of adventures with Indians, and around the fireside of his own home, listening to his father and his father’s friends, talk over the struggles, sufferings, and triumphs they endured as active participators in the Revolution, under the leadership of General Washington and General Wayne, and of their subsequent hard lives after they left Virginia, to found homes “in the dark and bloody ground.”