12. Zachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor was born November 24, 1784, at Montebello Plantation in Orange County, Virginia, to a family on the move. Richard Taylor had recently sold Hare Forest, his Orange County plantation and colonial frame house, and the family was headed for the Kentucky frontier. Alternately remembered as a representative of the frontier presidents or as another president from the Virginia gentry, Taylor was in reality a product of both the frontier and the Virginia planter class. The Taylors’ new homestead named Springfield was situated on Beargrass Creek only a few miles from the settlement of Louisville. Taylor’s earliest childhood home was a one-room log cabin but, as his father flourished as a planter and land speculator, the cabin would be replaced by the large brick structure which still stands.
--Andrew B. Leiter
Montebello lies on the edge of a busy State highway. There is a small pull-off with a historic marker at the entrance to the current iteration of the estate, barred from entry by a gate. I was making a few pictures of the sign and surrounding farmland when the current owners pulled up. After discussing the project, they invited me in through the gate to photograph. There is one small original structure that dates back to the 1700s. It may well have been this very structure where lodging was given to the Taylor family on their way to Louisville and Zachary was born. In the front room of the home was a small chest with original newspapers lining the interior with an article announcing Taylor's candidacy for the Whig party. The final image in the gallery above is the original Taylor home in Louisville which illustrates very well the myth and mystique of the log-cabin presidents. As Andy writes in the introduction to the project, "A number of presidents were indeed born in log cabins, including Andrew Jackson, Millard Fillmore, James K. Polk, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, and James Garfield. Log cabins, however, were not indicative of poverty in early America. In terms of the presidential childhoods, these were often starter homes of young upwardly mobile families who owned the land on which they lived. Presidents may have been born in log cabins but rarely were they living in one a decade later.".
-Matthew Albritton