Married 13Feb1832 Norfolk VA

Cowdrey-Cowdery-Cowdray genealogy: William Cowdrey of Lynn, Massachusetts, 1630, and his descendants, written by Mary Bryant Alverson Mehling pub. 1911

"Entered into rest, suddenly, at Norfolk, Va., on Tuesday, Sept. 19, 1899, Mrs. Coraelia Wickham Taylor, in the 89th year of her age. She was the widow of the late Walter H. Taylor, and the mother of the following children, who survive her: Major R. C. Taylor, Colonel Walter H. Taylor, Robertson Taylor of Baltimore, John C. Taylor, L. Page Taylor and Colonel George W. Taylor. Her daughters are Mrs. B. P. Loyall, Mrs. H. C. Whitehead, Miss Mary Louisa Taylor. She was also the mother of the late Wickham Taylor. Mrs. Taylor has been for many years the head of the family. She possessed her faculties to the last, and was the same calm, placid, wise, and lovable woman, with the same broad charity and unerring judgment, yesterday as she was thirty years ago. All the members of the family respected her wishes and venerated her character. With a strong, earnest and serene faith, and high trust in divine guidance, she has done a work in her family and in the community which stamps her as a remarkably strong and sweet character, equally wise as a friend and adviser, and influential in all the intimate relations of wife, mother and guide."

The following sketch, has been written that future generations may know the impression made by her beautiful life upon her third son, Robertson Taylor.

CORNELIA WICKHAM TAYLOR

Seldom in the experience of the human family, has a single life been made such a channel or instrument for bestowing great benefactions.

Endowed by nature with a lovely spirit, she early in life became the centre of a circle of devoted friends, who clung to her as long as they lived, — some of them bearing testimony to me of the early development of her strength of character, with such gentleness and sweetness as to secure universal admiration for "Cornelia Cowdery."

She married early in life, one well deserving such a prize, — Walter H. Taylor, First (in 1909 there are five so named descendants living). To her children she proved a matchless mother, instilling into their minds the highest principles, and inspiring them with such ambitions to be and to do the noblest and best, as they in turn have re-exerted, and sent on through two generations, so far.

A great calamity came to the family in the pestilence of 1855, when her husband, his sisters, and other members of the family, fell victims to yellow fever. Later on, she gathered her ten children around her, determined to make the future for them all that their deeply pious and noble father would have desired. Forty yeare after, she told me that none of her children had ever given her a heart ache, by departure from her teaching or wishes.

This was a wonderful tribute, particularly when it is remembered that there were seven boys, but it was the ambition of each one to be a comfort and joy to "Mother," which became to them, the sweetest word in the English language.

Then when the succeeding generations came along, both grandchildren and great-grandchildren found in her a most charming, loving counselor and friend, for her faculties never failed.

Besides the happy influence in the family, there was an outside circle who conferred with her, when problems in their own affairs needed solving, for which she was always a ready worker, giving the benefit of her experience and judgment.

So, to the very end, she was a steward in the vineyard of her Lord, whom she so faithfully served in all the departments of life, — a consistent christian indeed, until the end came, so peacefully, quietly and painlessly that the translation was not immediately noticed by those near her, She had remarked on looking out of the window, — "How beautiful the moon is shining to-night."

So passed to her reward this perfectly prepared Saint, whose whole life was a striking example of "walking with God."