Her father was Walter Smith, a prosperous Maryland planter from a prominent family and a veteran officer of the American Revolution.

[3] She met Lieutenant Zachary Taylor while in Kentucky in 1809, and after a seven month long courtship, she married him on June 21, 1810[5] in her sister's log house.

While in the frontier, they had six children: Ann Mackall in 1811, Sarah Knox in 1814, Octavia Pannill in 1816, Margaret Smith in 1819, Mary Elizabeth in 1824, and their only son Richard in 1826.

[2] Taylor was a devout lifelong Episcopalian, and her faith gave her reassurance while she endured the burdens of frontier life.

[1] Taylor was beset by another tragedy in 1835 when her daughter Sarah died of malarial fever at the age of 21, only three months after marrying Jefferson Davis.

[1] This separation was particularly difficult for Margaret,[8] and one rumor suggests that she swore to give up public life if her husband returned from the war alive.

During the war, she saw to the establishment of a chapel for military wives in Baton Rouge that would eventually become the St. James Episcopal Church.

[8] Her husband's success in the war won him national acclaim, and he was nominated by the Whig Party in the 1848 presidential election.

[4] Her experience in high society had long since been overshadowed by frontier life, and she had no desire to fulfill the role of White House hostess.

She may have influenced her husband's decision to appoint Reverdy Johnson as Attorney General due to her relationship with his wife.

[9] Taylor's limited public appearances and lack of experience in Washington social life inspired rumors and political attacks, often suggesting that she was unintelligent or unladylike.

[5] Taylor retained the private aspects of the first lady's duties, serving as head of the White House residence.

Slavery had become highly controversial by the time the Taylors entered the White House, and the slaves were typically kept upstairs so as not to draw attention to them.

[4] Contemporary biographers of Zachary Taylor during his time as a general gave little acknowledgement of his wife, with one merely portraying her as ill and frail and another neglecting to mention her at all outside of a footnote.

Heritage Auctions offered a ninth plate daguerreotype of the First Lady, a Taylor family heirloom, in November 2010, identifying it then as one of only two known photographs.

This is the one loaned by her daughter, White House Hostess Betty Taylor Bliss Dandridge, to be used as the model for the engraving.