NameFrances TAYLOR
Birth20 Aug 1700, Virginia
Death25 Nov 1761, Virginia
FatherJames Walker TAYLOR (1674-1730)
MotherMartha Montague THOMPSON (1679-1762)
Spouses
Birth17 Jan 1699/1700, Gloucester County, VA
Death27 Aug 1732
FatherJohn MADISON Jr. (1666-)
MotherIsabella TODD
Marriage24 Aug 1721
ChildrenJames (1723-1801)
 Frances (Fanny) (1725-1776)
 Elizabeth (1725-1773)
Notes for Frances TAYLOR
Other sources say she was born on August 20 and died on October 25.

She is grandmother to James Madison, 4th President of the United States.

From "James Madison: A Biography" by Ralph Ketcham: "Frances Taylor Madison, daughter of one of the first settlers on the Piedmont county of Orange in the colony of Virginia, died on Wednesday, November 25, 1761.
Her first grandson in a male line, James Madison, later father of the Constitution of the United States and its fourth President, was ten years old. Her grandnephew Zachary Taylor, the twelth President of the United States, would be born twenty-three years after her death. She was buried the following Sunday in the family plot on her plantation, and a month later, for her funeral sermon in nearby Anglican Brick church, a large group of 'connections', as Virginians called those related by ties of blood, marriage, and affection, came to honor her memory, in spite of the prevalance of small-pox in the vicinity. Indeed Frances Madison may herself have been carried off by the disease, which had erupted in Orange County the preceding spring.

"Frances Taylor's family was prolific and energetic. Her four sisters had between them at least fifteen children, and her four brothers, James III, Zachary, George, and Erasmus, had dozens of male heirs, who spread across Virginia and Kentucky. One grandson of James III served as quartermaster general of the western army during the War of 1812, and another, Hubbard, managed James madison's own land interests in Kentucky, while one of Zachary Taylor's grandsons became President of the United States.

"When Ambrose and Frances Taylor Madison moved to Orange County, not long after the death of James Taylor II (in 1729), they built a house, probably near the site of the still-extant family graveyard where James Madison is buried. On one side lived Martha Taylor chew and her husband, Thomas, sheriff of Orange County . . . Frances Madison's younger brother, James III, lived on the other side of her lands and managed much of the family business.

Ambrose's "will left the management of the family fortunes in his wife's hands until James, Sr., reached his eighteenth birthday. As she arranged for the care of her slaves, negotiated with English merchants for sale of her crops, purchased goods from abroad, and planned the major projects needed to expand a large plantation, she depended heavily on her nearby relatives."
Last Modified 17 Sep 2003Created 21 May 2013 using Reunion for Macintosh