Benjamin "Ogle" Tayloe (May 21, 1796 — February 25, 1868) was an American businessman, bon vivant, diplomat, scion of colonial tidewater gentry, and influential political activist in Washington, D.C. during the first half of the 19th century. Although he never held elective office, he was a prominent Whig and influential in presidential electoral politics in the 1840s and 1850s. His home, the Tayloe House, became a salon for politically powerful people in the federal government and socially influential individuals in the United States and abroad. Tayloe was also a party in the important 1869 contract law case, Willard v. Tayloe, 75 U.S. 557.
Birth and schooling Tayloe was born on May 21, 1796, at Ogle Hall in Annapolis, Maryland, a home belonging to his maternal grandfather, Benjamin Ogle, the ninth governor of Maryland. His maternal great-grandfather was former provincial governor Samuel Ogle, descended from an ancient Northern English Family, the Barons Ogle, a family allied with the Talbots of Shrewsbury (the premier Earldom in England), Cavendish's of Newcastle, Barons de Ros and ancient Norman House of Percy.Warfield, The Founders of Anne Arundel and Howard Counties, Maryland, 1905, p. 248–250.Burke, B. & Burke, J. B. (1863). A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Part II. 4th ed. London: Harrison, Pall Mall. Retrieved from Google Books. Tayloe's father was Colonel John Tayloe III, one of the richest people in Virginia.Coclanis, The Atlantic Economy During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 2005, p. 330-331. Colonel Tayloe had built The Octagon House in 1800, and his great-grandfather. John Tayloe II, built the great country estate house of Mount Airy in Richmond County, Virginia, in 1762 on an estate his father, John Tayloe I inherited from his father William Tayloe (the nephew) previously known as "Tayloe's Quarter."McCue, The Octagon: Being an Account of a Famous Washington Residence, Its Great Years, Decline & Restoration, 1976, p. 9. In addition, he counted as his progenitors' such men of the tidewater gentry at Col. Thomas Addison of Oxon Hill Manor, and Benjamin Tasker Sr.
He was tutored by Samuel Hoar, a prominent lawyer and politician in the state of Massachusetts. When he was 13 years old, he entered Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. His roommate was John Adams Dix, later the United States Secretary of the Treasury, a U.S. senator, and 24th governor of New York. See, generally, Dix, Memoirs of John Adams Dix, 1883. He entered Harvard College in 1811, where his classmates included some of the most prominent Americans of the next half-century: historian Jared Sparks; jurist Theophilus Parsons; cleric and politician John G. Palfrey; Unitarian minister Convers Francis; businessman John Amory Lowell; and historian William H. Prescott. He was a member of the Porcellian Club. While in college during the War of 1812, he witnessed the famous battle between and . For information about the battle, see, generally, Poolman, Guns Off Cape Ann: The Story of the Shannon and the Chesapeake, 1962. He dined with Chesapeakes captain, James Lawrence, the night before the battle. He graduated from Harvard in 1815.
Diplomatic career From 1815 to 1817, Tayloe studied law under United States Attorney General Richard Rush. When Rush was appointed Minister to Great Britain in 1817, Tayloe was named his Private Secretary. While in London, he lived at 15 King Street, Portman Square. He visited often with many of Great Britain's most influential politicians and nobility. His American associates in London included Robert Gilmor Jr. and wife, Robert Goodloe Harper and his wife, daughter of Charles Carroll of Carrollton; Washington Allston, and Messers. Gibbes of Charleston, William Gray Brooks, George Eustis Sr., Edward Everett, Theodore Lyman II, George Peabody, Thomas Aspinwall (consul), Thomas Handasyd Perkins of Boston; Archibald Gracie II, Joseph Delafield, Edward Livingston (speaker) of New York. He became close friends with the young painter Washington Allston and the author Washington Irving. He was presented to the Prince Regent, George, in 1818 and was invited to a birthday party for him. He then traveled widely; to Ireland, and Scotland where he met with Thomas Brown (philosopher), David Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan, brother of Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine, at Dryburgh Abbey, before heading to the continent. He was an observer at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818 and attended a ball at the conclusion by securing the ticket of Prince Metternich who could not attend. He then traveled to Italy and toured Rome with the aforementioned R.G. Haper and wife, the former Ms Carroll of Carrollton where he was presented to Ferdinand III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Pope Pius VII. He dined with Lucien Bonaparte, and was entertained by Pauline Bonaparte, Princess Borghese, along with Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux. He traveled to Paris in the spring of 1819, where Minister to France Albert Gallatin introduced him to King Louis XVIII and Talleyrand.
Tayloe returned to the United States in November 1819 and settled at Windsor (his inherited family estate in King George County, Virginia), where he began writing for various horse racing and horse breeding publications. Belair Mansion, his maternal grandfather's residence, had been home to some of the earliest horse racing and horse breeding in the United States, and would continue to be so for three centuries. See: Fiehler and Baltz, "National Register of Historic Places Inventory – Nomination Form: Belair Mansion," 1976.
On November 8, 1824, Tayloe married Julia Maria Dickinson of Troy, New York. The couple had six children: John (born 1826), Edward (born 1829), Estelle (born 1833), Anna (born 1834), Eugenie (born 1835), and Julia (born 1838). Anna died when just two years old. Although Tayloe preferred to live at Windsor, his wife asked that they move into the city where she was more comfortable.
On March 23, 1828, Tayloe's father, Col. John Tayloe III, died.Hardy, Colonial Families of the Southern States of America, 1911, p. 502. In 1816 Col. Tayloe had built six two-story houses facing Pennsylvania Avenue at 14th Street NW, and in 1817 had leased them to John Tennison who ran them as a hotel.Moeller and Weeks, AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C., 2006, p. 133.Hogarth, Walking Tours of Old Washington and Alexandria, 1985, p. 28. The structures served as a hotel for the next three decades, the leaseholder and name changing several times: Williamson's Mansion Hotel, Fullers American House, and the City Hotel.
He adopted his father's coat of arms, Purpure a sword palewise proper between two lions rampant addorsed [Argent?]. 1. Tayloe, John III (Mount Airy, Richmond Co, Va, 1770-1828); and 2. Tayloe, Benjamin Ogle (Annapolis, 1796-Rome, 1868) in "Roll of Early American Arms." The American Heraldry Society, accessed August 2019. The sword John III and Benjamin displayed was an epee; the only child of Sarah Knowles Bolton, librarian Charles Knowles Bolton, considered that the lions were likely Ermine rather than Argent.Bolton, Charles Knowles. Bolton's American Armory. Boston: F. W. Faxon Co, 1927
Later career Residence in Washington, D.C.
In 1828, Tayloe built his wife a house in Washington, D.C., directly across the street from the White House.Carrier, Washington D.C.: A Historical Walking Tour, 1999, p. 76.Evelyn, Dickson, and Ackerman, On This Spot: Pinpointing the Past in Washington, D.C., 2008, p. 166.Smith, "Historic Washington Homes," Records of the Columbia Historical Society, 1908, p. 256. The Tayloes did not immediately occupy their home, however. Tayloe had a strong political disagreement with the newly elected president, Andrew Jackson, and refused to move into the home. Lockwood, Historic Homes in Washington: Its Noted Men and Women, 1889 Instead, Tayloe leased the building to Thomas Swann Sr., a lawyer (and the father of Thomas Swann Jr., who became Governor of Maryland in 1866). Swann vacated the home in November 1829, at which time Tayloe and his wife made the house their permanent residence.
Over the four decades following its construction, the Tayloe House was an important social gathering place for prominent Washingtonians. Bednar, L' Enfant's Legacy: Public Open Spaces in Washington, D.C., 2006, p. 99. In 1829, when Henry Clay left the office of Secretary of State, much of the furniture in his home was acquired by the Tayloes and used to decorate their home. Tayloe House was the last house in Washington which President William Henry Harrison visited before he died in 1841. At least one source claims that President Harrison contracted the illness which eventually killed him while walking through the slush to the Tayloe house in order to offer Tayloe's brother employment in the federal civil service. See: Bowers, The Party Battles of the Jackson Period, 1922, p. 14.
In 1859 Tayloe House was the scene of a murder. Philip Barton Key II was the son of Francis Scott Key and the nephew of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney.Walther, The Shattering of the Union: America in the 1850s, 2004 In the spring of 1858, Key began having an affair with Teresa Bagioli Sickles, the wife of his friend Daniel Sickles.Gallagher, Three Days at Gettysburg: Essays on Confederate and Union Leadership, 1999, p. 133. On February 26, 1859, Sickles learned of the affair. The following day, he saw Key in Lafayette Square signalling to his wife. Sickles rushed out into the park, drew a single pistol, and shot the unarmed Key three times while the other man pleaded for his life. Key was taken into the nearby Tayloe House and died moments later. Key's spirit, eyewitnesses and authors claim, now haunts Lafayette Square and can be seen on dark nights near the spot where he was shot.Apkarian-Russell, Washington's Haunted Past: Capital Ghosts of America, 2006, p. 88; Cohen, Civil War Ghosts, 1999, p. 49.
As Tayloe was one of the most influential and active members of the Whig Party in the District of Columbia, the Tayloe house became a noted meeting place for many of the leading political figures of early 19th century American politics. Among the many frequent visitors to the house were Chief Justice John Marshall, Senator and Secretary of State Henry Clay, Senator and Secretary of State Daniel Webster, Vice President and Secretary of State John C. Calhoun, Senator Henry Clay, Senator and Secretary of State Lewis Cass, Secretary of State Edward Livingston, Speaker of the House and Senator Robert Charles Winthrop, General Winfield Scott, Senator and Secretary of State Edward Everett, Senator and Secretary of State William H. Seward, Associate Justice Joseph Story, and many others.Adams and Keene, Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign, 2008, p. 109.Oppel and Meisel, Washington, D.C.: A Turn-of-the-Century Treasury, 1987, p. 10.Latimer, Your Washington and Mine, 1924, p. 198.Bowers, The Party Battles of the Jackson Period, 1922, p. 14. Presidents John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, and Millard Fillmore also were frequent guests. Anthony Trollope spent much of his free time being entertained by the Tayloes at their home during his visit to Washington in the winter of 1862.
Country estate In addition to his home in Washington City, Tayloe owned Petworth (Washington, D.C.), a estate in Washington County near the Soldiers' Home at the northeast corner of 7th Street Pike and Rock Creek Church Road.
Plantation activities