A Family Matriarch Remembered...

My parents raised their adopted children practically a continent and ocean from their extended family. Hawaii was just too beautiful a paradise to forsake for the east coast.

My mother and cousin Barbara have a passion for their Virginia family heritage and are always happy to take me by the hand and let me peek behind the curtain of history to meet the people who shaped and influenced our families…They recently introduced me to my late, great grandmother...



Meet my great grandmother Loula Tayloe (maiden name Dickinson), born at the beginning of the Civil War on Berry Plain Farm into the family of a wealthy Virginian farmer (lost his fortune in the war).

With her father away at war, Loula’s mother sent her to Mississippi for seven years. Still at Berry Plain, her mother was branded a sympathizer for feeding enemy troops. Although I would think feeding a hungry enemy might be smart survival and protection for a single woman on a farm with several children.

Loula later reunited with her siblings in Fredericksburg and lived with her grandmother Jane Hipkins Dickinson in another family home. It was a white frame house at the corner of Charles and Lewis Streets - which is now a museum as it was also the final residence of Mary Washington – purchased for her by her son President George Washington.



At the tender age of 20, Loula met and married Forrest Plater Tayloe in 1881. Just a short walk from my parents home in King George County, Loula and Forest built and lived in Chatterton.

They lived along the Patomoc, raised their family of 9 girls and 1 boy (another was stillborn, and their only son died of an accidental gunshot). There they lived until 1928.

Around 1890 Georgia O'Keefe of Charlottesville was engaged to be a governess to the 5 girls, ranging in ages 1 to 8. According to Barbara, “I do not know how long she stayed, but I heard that Grandmother thought she was a little fast! How bored Georgia must have been at Little Chatterton.”

In her later years, she split her time living with one of her daughters at Ferry Farm (now also a protected historical residence as George Washington's boyhood home) and another daughter who lived just down the road from my parent's.

Her husband Forrest died in 1930. And Loula died at 94 on March 5, 1956.

Her August birthdays were always joyful occasions, which were often family reunions, celebrated at their Potomac picnic grounds. As pictured above, she always presented herself as a lady, dressed in stockings and a dress. In the above photo, the year is 1946 and she is 84.