Henry Taylor, I

DAILY RICHMOND ENQUIRER Richmond, VA, Thursday, February 6, 1845 (mpg. 3, col. 2)

DEATHS.

At Belvidera, Spotsylvania, on the 10th December, Henry Taylor, in the 49th year of his age. After a funeral service, his remains were removed to the family sepulchre, at Hazelwood, the former residence of his father, Col. John Taylor of Caroline, attended by very many who, recently, were his neighbors, and by yet more of those who, at an earlier period, had mingled with him in social life - whose sorrow, and sympathy and associate memories of past happiness, linked his age with his manhood and youth - by his numerous dependents, whose strong attachment, growing out of the relations in which he stood to them, evinced the conviction, that their master's ambition reached beyond them, only to his blood relations and dearest friends - and whose bitter lamentations showed that they were conscious that they had never been regarded as waifs upon life's ocean, as the mere means of selfish and personal aggrandizement, but as confiding and contented, though humble friends, to be comforted and cared for - and by his children, brothers, nephews and nieces, whose strong, deep-rooted affectation and anguish, great, irrepressible, welling up from the deep fountains of the heart, must be overpowering for a time - but who should learn to cast the soul's gloom from them by the recollection that all his energies, moral and intellectual, had been constantly and successfully exerted to promote the happiness of his children, dependents, and all others within verge of his influence, and to acquire a position, in itself respectable, yet in filling which he should be not merely an attribute of the station - by the conviction that a life of benefits rendered, (self-elevating, purifying, exalting on earth) could hardly fail to ensure happiness in Heaven! It is indeed a consolation to believe, that in his anticipations of his future, he must have promised to himself the just meed of good deeds, recorded in the book of life, infinitely more desirable than the toy of long life on earth - which is valuable only as a paragraph for a better in Heaven - though often exalted by the tissue of appearances above its intrinsic worth.

To talk of the dead, whose measure of existence has been filled by acts of kindness and love, expands the heart, elevates the mind, and raises the soul to God, the great distributer of our respective parts on the theater of life. I feel it relieves, too though it does not fill "an aching void in the bosom," but I must admit no selfish feeling in speaking of him: and will, therefore, only add, that merciful, kind, and generous his course through life, was marked by strength, purity, and dignity of mind; by simple habits and calm equanimity; by refined sentiments, yet inexpensive habits; by strong feelings, curbed by firm principles, native and cultivated talents, without the spur of ambition, and devoid of the stimulating influence of ordinary selfishness - and that equitable, yet inflexible in his judgements - mild, yet determined in his purposes, he was conspicuously and proverbially successful in all his undertakings without exciting aught of envy or uncharitableness. T.* Reference: [https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/103800368/henry-taylor Find A Grave Memorial] - [https://www.geni.com/projects/SmartCopy/18783 SmartCopy]: ''Apr 18 2021, 9:17:11 UTC''