Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/183

 ZACHARY TAYLOR 141 and wounded in the hospitals there. Mrs. Taylor was without social ambition, and when Gen. Tay lor became president she reluctantly accepted her responsibilities, regarding the office as a &quot;plot to deprive her of her husband s society and to shorten his life by unnecessary care.&quot; She surrendered to her youngest daughter the superintendence of the household, and took no part in social duties. Her eldest daughter, ANN, married Dr. Robert Wood, Assistant- Surgeon- General of the Army. An other daughter, SARAH KNOX, became the wife of Jefferson Davis, the marriage taking place near Louisville, Ky., the bride s uncle, Hancock Tay lor, acting for her father, who was then with his command on the frontier. Another daughter, ELIZABETH,, born in Jefferson County, Ky., in 1824, was educated in Phila delphia, married Maj. William W. S. Bliss in her nineteenth year, and, on her father s inauguration, became mistress of the White House. Mrs. Bliss, or Miss Betty, as she was popularly called, was a graceful and accomplished hostess, and, it is said, &quot;did the honors of the establishment with the art- lessness of a rustic belle and the grace of a duch ess.&quot; After the death of her distinguished father in 1850, and her husband in 1853, she spent several years in retirement, subsequently marrying Philip Pendleton Dandridge, of Winchester, Va., whom