Submitted by Laura Winder
Delilah Taylor was the third child and third daughter of Joseph Taylor Jr. (cal.1751-1819) and Sarah Best (cal. 1764-1834). We believe Delilah was born about 1786/7, when her family was still living on Conetoe Creek, Martin/Edgecombe County, North Carolina.
There is no known photograph of her as yet, but according to stories that came down to her descendant Frances Wallace Marino, she was tall and slender with dark hair and blue eyes. As a girl she was undoubtedly taught the many skills required of a planter/farmer wife: meal preparation and food production, which meant keeping a large garden and often an orchard, and preserving as much food as possible for the coming winter, as well as making cider for the family’s use. She would probably have been taught to run a home dairy, which meant taking the milk after each milking and making butter, buttermilk, and possibly cheese. In the garden along with a variety of vegetables and herbs, she probably grew flax and cotton. She would have been taught how to harvest flax and take it through the grueling process to produce linen thread, and how prepare the cotton for spinning into thread. Then, if the family had its own loom, she was taught how to set up a loom and set the warp and run the shuttles to make cloth. After all that, the finished cloth still had to be made into clothes. (When one reads of the process of making cloth, one realizes why even an inch of usable cloth was never discarded!)
About 1805, she married John Wallace, the brother of her sister Amy’s husband Etheldred Wallace, probably at Martin/Edgecombe Co., North Carolina. John Wallace’s grandfather, William Wallace Sr., is known to have been a Baptist minister from the “Kehukee Association.” Their marriage was possibly under the auspices of this group, for which no records have been located.
To this marriage were born ten children: Amy, who probably died young (1806), Evans (1807), William (1810), Riley (1812), Reuben (1813), Susannah (1819), Amy (1821), Caswell (1822), Eaton (1825), and Agnes (1830).
Family tradition is that John and Delilah loved each other and were very happy together.
When Joseph Taylor Jr. and Sarah Best moved their family from North Carolina to Kentucky in 1808/9, Delilah and John apparently went with them. Later, they moved to Stewart County, Tennessee, where Delilah’s sister Amy and her husband Etheldred Wallace were already living. And still later they moved to Trigg Co., Kentucky.
John Wallace and his son Evans were both doctors who had a healing touch. Neither had formal medical education, as far as is known, but were known to be very good caring for wounds and fractures and other maladies of rural life.
In 1853, some kind of pestilent epidemic hit the area where they were living (possibly smallpox). John and Delilah’s son Eaton and his family were stricken with the disease. John and Delilah lived next door, and undoubtedly went to the little family’s aid. It is possible that John and Delilah both died of the terrible disease, as did Eaton and his wife Milbry, and at least three of their children. No formal documentation has yet been found for the deaths of John and Delilah, and their burial place is unknown. However, no other mention is found of them after 1853.
At one time it was questioned whether Delilah was a child of Joseph Taylor Jr and Sarah Best. She has not yet appeared as Delilah Taylor in any surviving official document of the time. She is recorded as Delila Wallace, age 63, in the 1850 Trigg Co., KY, census, with her husband John Wallace, age 68, with both listed as born in North Carolina. (Remember that many records were burned in North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee during the Civil War, and many other records have disintegrated from lack of proper storage, especially in rural counties.) However, the oral tradition about Delilah and her connection with this Taylor family is so strong, we feel certain that she is “ours,” and love and admire her for her hard work and kindness during her life.
