Mary Elizabeth Bliss

Mary Elizabeth Bliss

Mary Elizabeth Taylor Bliss, born Mary Elizabeth Taylor (April 20, 1824 – July 25, 1909), was the youngest of the five daughters of President Zachary Taylor (1849-1850) and Margaret Mackall Smith Taylor.

In 1848, after her father was elected president, Mary Elizabeth married William Wallace Smith Bliss, an army officer who had served with her father. Taylor appointed William Bliss as Presidential Secretary. At the age of 22, Mary Elizabeth Bliss served as First Lady during her father's presidency, as her mother declined the social role.

Her father, mother and husband all died by 1853. Mary Elizabeth Bliss remarried five years later and had a long life.

Read more about Mary Elizabeth Bliss:  Early Life and Education, Marriage and Family, Political Career

Famous quotes containing the words mary and/or bliss:

    He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.
    —Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)

    And are not men than they more blind,
    Who having eyes yet never find
    The bliss in which they move:
    Like statues dead
    They up and down are carried,
    Yet neither see nor love.
    Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)