Susan Lucy Taylor
Cincinnati Daily Gazette, Friday, 9 December 1881, page 10
A WONDERFUL WOMAN
Mrs. Susan Lucy Taylor, wife of Col. James Taylor, one of the
oldest, wealthiest and most influential citizens of Newport Ky. died at the
family residence in that city yesterday morning at 8 o'clock, of pneumonia, aged
seventy-four years.
Mrs. Taylor was a very remarkable woman in chronicling whose death the memory of a long forgotten past is vividly awakened. Mrs. Taylor was the granddaughter of Waller Overton, renowned both as a statesman and warrior, who emigrated to Kentucky, settling some five miles from Lexington before the war of the revolution. Col. Tom Overton, Gen. Jackson's second in his duel with Dickinson, was a great uncle of the deceased. Her father was the Hon. William T Barry, of Virginia, who removed to Jessamine County, Kentucky in 1796, was elected to the lower house of the Legislature in 1807, several times returned and in 1817 was elected to the State Senate.
His career while serving in that body was so brilliant that he was shortly chosen without dissent to act in the United States Congress. He served with distinction in the war of 1812 as Aid-de-Camp to the renowned Gov Shelby. He was afterward Speaker of the Legislature and in 1820 served in the United States Senate.
He was twice Lt. Governor of the State and framed the bill for the establishment of the Bank of Kentucky, which reported to have saved the state from utter bankruptcy. In 1829 President Jackson appointed Mr. Barry Postmaster General and invited him to a seat in his Cabinet, he being the first of all Postmaster Generals created a member of the Cabinet.
On account of his failing health The President appointed him, in 1835, Minister to Spain but he died at Liverpool, Eng. August 30, 1835, while on the way to his mission. After eighteen years the Legislature ordered the remains to be brought back from England and interred in that part of the cemetery at Frankfort reserved for the distinguished dead of Kentucky and the people of Lexington erected a monument in their Public Square to his memory.
Hon. William T Barry was twice married. The subject of this sketch was born to him by his first wife, Martha Overton, September 27, 1807. Her stepmother was a daughter of the Hon John T Mason, of Virginia, and of the five children by these two unions, she was the only survivor.
Lucy Barry upon the 20th of May 1824, then in her brightest girlhood, was married to Col. James Taylor, who now survives her and thus again she became allied to another of our great historical families that dates its origin to the earliest colonization of Virginia. Col. James Taylor, son and only living child of Gen. James Taylor of revolutionary fame, was born August 9, 1802 at Bellevue, the residence of his father, near Newport Ky. Mr. Taylor is closely related to two Presidents of this country, James Madison and Zachary Taylor, his grandfather being a member of the convention of Virginia that adopted the Constitution of the United States.
In 1793 his father settled at Newport Ky. He marked out the first road from Newport to Lexington, fought in the war of 1812 as a Major General, proving himself brave, patriotic and valuable to his country, pledging his individual fortune for the support of his army, when the officers of the government found themselves without funds. Upon the death of his father Col. Taylor inherited an immense fortune, and in the handling of so vast an estate he has shown himself to be one of the first land lawyers of the day, and now enjoys the reputation of being one of the most vigorous and active as well as accurate and rapid thinkers of the legal lights of his state.
Mr. Taylor is the last of eleven children, four of whom grew up to be married. There were Mrs. Horatio T Harris, Mrs. John W Tibbatts and Mrs. George T Williamson. Mrs. Tibbatts was the wife of the Hon. John W Tibbatts, three of whose daughters, Mrs. George W Jones, Mrs. Gen. George Hodge and Mrs. Henry Timberlake, now survive. Mrs. Taylor, the deceased, was an exceptionally brilliant women, possessed of great natural ability, which was further heightened by great learning.
Her schooldays were spent at Leesburg Va. where she received her earliest education, graduating finally with high honors, especially in the languages at Lafayette Academy, Lexington Ky. She was possessed of an unusually clear mind and was so well versed in law as to be able to render at times, valuable assistance to her distinguished husband in the conduct of his extensive business.
For many years she was an invalid, and was constantly confined to her room, spending the major portion of her time in study. With her natural talents and inherent literary instincts, she thus became almost a prodigy in learning and her powers were such that had she been less favored by fortune, she would have become famous among the literati of the country.
She was a woman of great soul and feeling, ever mindful of others, and so philanthropic, both in principle and practice, that it was remarked of her by an eminent Episcopal divine who had been her pastor for many years, that "She was the grandest human being he had ever seen, both in soul and intellect."
Her last words were "Good night" and to the near friends who gather round her lifeless clay let the thought come that, though dead, she still lives and hearken unto the voice that says, "Believe as I have believed, live as I have lived: death is only the night which ends the weary day called life."
The deceased ws the mother of six children, five of whom survive her, Mrs. John Taylor, the banker; Barry Taylor, attorney at law; Mrs. T L Jones, wife of Hon. T L Jones; Mrs. D Saunders, and Mrs. Col. James W Abert. The funeral takes place Sunday afternoon at 2 o'clock.
The interment will be in Evergreen Cemetery, the Rev Pettis, pastor of St Paul P E Church, of which the deceased was a member, officiating. The pallbearers selected are Messrs. Waller Overton, George W Jones, William Williamson, Judge Price, Grant Green, Henry Queen and Frank Clark.
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Susan Lucy Barry Taylor Life Sketch