Walter Herron Taylor (June 13, 1838 – March 1, 1916) was an American banker, lawyer, soldier, politician, author, and railroad executive from Norfolk, Virginia.

During the American Civil War, he fought with the Confederate States Army, became a key aide to General Robert E. Lee and rose to the rank of Colonel.

His maternal grandfather, Dr. Jonathan Cowdery, had been taken captive by pirates in Tripoli before the War of 1812 and lived to be the eldest officer in the U.S. Navy.

Other ancestors included colonial era migrants William Farrar and Richard Cocke as well as English colonist Adam Thoroughgood and his wife Sarah.

[2] Throughgood (1604–1640) rose from buying his passage across the Atlantic Ocean by becoming an indentured servant, to become an early colonial leader (and militia captain) in Norfolk County.

[citation needed] Following a local private education suitable for his class, including at Norfolk Academy, and despite his father's death, Walter Taylor went to Lexington, Virginia for higher studies.

(He verbally transmitted the famous "if practicable" order from Lee to General Richard S. Ewell below Cemetery Hill during the Battle of Gettysburg.)

Taylor eventually attained a rank almost commensurate with his great staff responsibilities, being promoted to lieutenant colonel on December 12, 1863.

A messenger sent ahead to Richmond advised his bride-to-be, who made arrangements with Reverend Dr. Charles Minnigerode, the rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church.

After midnight, in the wee hours of April 3, 1865, just before evacuating Confederates set fire to the city and looters ran wild in its streets, Taylor and Miss Saunders were married in the Crenshaw house parlor.

One week after the surrender at Appomattox Court House, Taylor returned to Richmond with General Lee, picked up his bride, and drove her back to Norfolk in a buggy.

Near the end of the 19th century, Taylor helped develop the Ocean View area, located along the south shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Norfolk County.

[6] Taylor devoted a considerable portion of his postwar years to defending General Lee's reputation (which developed into the Lost Cause historiography), as well as settling controversies related to the Army of Northern Virginia.

Although less vehement than the notoriously irascible former General Jubal Early, Taylor worked with the Louisiana-based Southern Historical Society.