William Wallace Smith Bliss - Political Career

Political Career

Taylor appointed Bliss as Private Secretary to the President (he was able to take leave from the Army for this assignment).

As the President's wife took no part in formal social events, she delegated the social role to their daughter Mary Elizabeth Bliss, who effectively became the First Lady of the White House at the age of 22. The popular young couple seemed destined to become powerful figures in Washington.

The President died suddenly in July 1850. Bliss and his wife Mary accompanied her widowed mother to Pascagoula, Mississippi. She died there in 1852, at the home of another daughter.

Bliss was assigned as Adjutant-General of the Western Division of the Army. Following a summer visit to New Orleans on behalf of University of Louisiana, Bliss contracted yellow fever. He died at Pascagoula on August 5, 1853, aged 38. He was buried at Girod Street Cemetery, New Orleans. Mary Taylor Bliss lost her father, mother, and husband in little more than three years. Five years later, she remarried.