Marshall County, OK - Biography - Dorsey Buckner Taliaferro and Byrd Whiting Taliaferro http://files.usgwarchives.net/ok/marshall/biography/t4160001.txt --------------------------------- Copyright © 2000 by Ella Brown ellabbrown@email.msn.com This copy contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives. --------------------------------- USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Source: ------------------------------------------------------------------ Dorsey Buckner Taliaferro and Byrd Whiting Taliaferro (1866-1927) ( 1879-1935) Early Legacy LoRene T. Reirdon wrote these memories for her family in 1986 but they were not completed in time for publication for the articles of Marshall County. Their children and grandchildren share them with you now. Beauford Norborne Taliaferro (1900-1968) George Whiting Taliaferro (1903-1964) Lo Rene Taliaferro Reirdon (1907- 2000) Mary Byrd Taliaferro French (1916-1998) A century ago, in 1886, our father, D.B. Taliaferro, crossed Red River and came to Pickens County in the Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory. With him he brought his father, Col. T.D. Taliaferro, and two younger sisters, Eddie Madison and Varina Davis. His paternal grand-parents, Dr. William Thomas Warren Taliaferro and his wife had come from Virginia to make a new home in Texas, near their son and his large family. Their deaths occurred in 1883 and 1884. D.B’s younger brother, Henry Beauford, died in Sherman, Texas, at the home of his sister, Janie Madison Vaden, (Mrs. Frank C.) who expired one month later in 1894. He was buried in Gainesville, Texas. His mother and both paternal grandparents were buried near Gainesville, Cooke County, Texas, their home at that time. Dr. W.T. W. Taliaferro, his grandfather, was born at “Blenheim,”, the Taliaferro family estate, in Caroline County, Va., in 1801. His great-grandfather, Thomas Norborne Taliaferro, was also born there in 1773. His wife, Elizabeth Bankhead Buckner, was a niece of President James Monroe. Our paternal grandmother, Eliza Lewis Madison, was the fifth child of her parents, Ambrose Madison (a nephew of President James Madison, Jr.) and Jane Bankhead Willis, who had ten children. Her paternal grandfather was General Willliam Madison (1763-1843), younger brother of the President. He had distinguished himself in the war of 1812. He built “The Residence” at Woodberry Forest, Orange, Va., in 1793 and willed it to his son, Ambrose Madison. Here, Eliza L. Madison was born in 1834 and married in 1854 to Col. T.D.Taliaferro. She was a descendant of Col. Henry Willis, who married Mildred Washington, aunt and godmother of President George Washington. Dorsey Buckner Taliaferro was born in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, Feb. 3, 1866, the son of Col. Thomas Dorsey Taliaferro and Eliza Lewis Madison Taliaferro. He was the sixth child, one of 4 sons, in a family of 11 children. After the Civil War, when he was only three years old, his parents moved to Grayson County, Texas, where he attended public school. As a boy, and as a young man, D.B. was associated with his father in farming and stock raising in Grayson County and Cooke County, near Gainesville, their later home. Being industrious, energetic and ambitious, he was eager to be on his own and start out for himself when he was twenty years old. In 1886, he moved to the Chickasaw Nation in Indian Territory locating near Lebanon, I.T., where he remained seven years. In 1893, this pioneer cattleman and rancher moved to his ranch home about four miles south of present-day Madill. He educated his two younger sisters, Eddie and Varina, in Kidd-Key College, Sherman, Texas, where Eddie graduated in 1894. Eddie soon married T.W. Erwin while Varina became a companion to their father, who was blind and also lived on the ranch when D.B. brought his young bride, age 19, to the Territory. D.B. had remarked to some younger relatives that he saw that pretty little girl and he was going to wait on her to grow up and marry her. He knew their family several years through the cattle business. Bird Whiting was the daughter of George Dugan Fredrick Whiting and Mollie(Fitzgerald) Whiting near Bells, Texas. The Whiting home was built on a land grant given in 1835 to Daniel Dugan, his grandfather, in present day Grayson Co., Texas. Bird graduated from the Grayson County College in Whitewright, Texas in June of 1898. They were married Dec. 21, 1898, in the family home of her parents. After their wedding and their honeymoon in New Orleans, La., the couple made their home on his ranch two miles south of Madill (which at that time was the stock-ranch of his brother, W.N.) He helped his brother, W.N. Taliaferro and Judge Isaac Overton Lewis of Oakland, lay out the townsite of Madill, in May, 1900, when 1280 acres of land was surveyed into town lots by the town-site agent.. Their children: Beauford Norbone Taliaferro (1900-1968) married Octavis Evelyn Copley(1906-1950) George Whiting Taliaferro (1903-1964) LoRene Madison Taliaferro (1908-2000) married Jack Joseph Reirdon (1907-1957) Mary Byrd Taliaferro (1916-1998) married Allen Webb French (1915-1981)