Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 2.djvu/414

  to join General Jackson at Nashville, Tennessee, and was a surgeon in the army in all the campaigns until the close of the war, at New Orleans. He returned to Nashville and studied law with his relative. Gen. William White, and practiced for twenty-five years. He was a member of the Tennessee constitutional convention of 1834, and subsequently attorney-general. He retired from practice in 1843, and, unmarried, passed the remainder of his life with his sister, Mrs. Sarah White McAllister, in Virginia. He died in 1856, on the presidential election day; his last words were: "I must get up and vote for Fillmore."

Taylor, George Keith, son of Captain Richard Taylor, of Petersburg, clerk of the vestry of Blandford, was born in Prince George county, Virginia, attended William and Mary College in 1793 and studied law and became eminent at the bar. He was a member of the legislature of 1798-99, and a warm defender of the alien and sedition laws. He was a leader of the Federal party, and an ally of John Marshall, whose sister he married. He was a most able advocate at the bar in criminal cases, and as an orator was regarded as little inferior to Patrick Henry. Gilmer said of him: "He was one of the most eminent lawyers of his state,—acute, profound, logical and persuasive: of fine wit, exquisite humor, brilliant fancy, and most amiable disposition." To Mr. Taylor's efforts in the legislature was due Virginia's penitentiary system, and his success in securing an amelioration of the criminal code of the state made him a public benefactor. He died in Petersburg, November 9, 1815. His grandmother. Anne Keith, who married George Walker, gunner of Point Comfort Fort and pilot of James river, was a daughter of George Keith, the celebrated Quaker divine.

Dabney, Thomas Gregory Smith, son of Benjamin Dabney and Sarah Smith, daughter of Rev. Thomas Smith of Cople parish, Westmoreland county, Virginia, was born in King and Queen county, Virginia, January 4, 1798; was under the guardianship of his uncle John Augustine Smith, president of William and Mary College; went to school in Elizabeth, New Jersey; attended William and Mary College. In 1835 he moved to Mississippi, where he became a successful cotton planter. He was a strong admirer of Henry Clay, and like other Old Line Whigs of the South were led by that statesman into strong nationalistic views inconsistent with their early states rights professions. But when the war broke out in 1861, he cast his lot with the South, and three of his sons joined the Confederate army. He married (first) Mary Adelaide, daughter of Samuel Tyler, chancellor of the Williamsburg district, Virginia. He married (second) Sophia Hill, daughter of Charles Hill, of King and Queen county. By the last marriage he was father of Virginius Dabney (q. v.). author of "Don Miff," and Susan D. Dabney (who married Rev. Lyell Smedes, of Raleigh, North Carolina), whose work "Memorials of a Southern Planter," depicting the character and life of her father, elicited a letter from Mr. Gladstone of England, in which he said that he found in Mr. Dabney "one of the very noblest of human characters,"

Conyers, Sarah, resided in Richmond, Virginia, and perished in the burning of the