Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb__ A Tour of Presidential Gravesites - Brian Lamb [25]
The cemetery contains only one main road which leads directly from the cemetery entrance to Taylor’s gravesite.
For additional information
Zachary Taylor National Cemetery
4701 Brownsboro Road
Louisville, KY 40207
Phone: (502) 893-3852
www.cem.va.gov/cems/nchp/ZacharyTaylor.asp
“For a few days the country’s twelfth president was back in the headlines…”
—Richard Norton Smith
For Zachary Taylor, eternal rest was anything but. It was bad enough that “Old Rough and Ready” suffered an agonizing death from cholera in July 1850. Margaret Taylor had her husband’s casket opened three times before interment in order that she might gaze upon his lifeless features. The pattern repeated itself 141 years later, when a prospective academic biographer, persuaded that Taylor may have been poisoned by his political enemies, obtained permission to remove the general’s mortal remains from the mausoleum in which they had rested just outside Louisville, Kentucky since early in this century. Oliver Stone, it appeared, had no monopoly on conspiracy theories. For a few days the country’s twelfth president was back in the headlines, a perfect USA Today story, lacking only a front page poll and graphic of Taylor astride “Old Whitey,” his Mexican War mount. All glory is fleeting, however: when tests for arsenic proved negative, Taylor returned to Louisville and the obscurity that has enshrouded him since death.
—RNS
Zachary Taylor National Cemetery is the final resting place for hundreds of military veterans
Millard Fillmore
Buried: Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, New York
Thirteenth President - 1850-1853
Born: January 7, 1800, in Cayuga County, New York
Died: 11:10 p.m. on March 8, 1874, in Buffalo, New York
Age at death: 74
Cause of death: Stroke
Final words: “The nourishment is palatable.”
Admission to Forest Lawn Cemetery: Free
Best known for being one of the least known presidents, Millard Fillmore was the last Whig to win the White House. The most notable achievement of his administration was the Compromise of 1850, which delayed civil war over the slavery issue. On a more personal level, the book-loving Fillmore and wife Abigail (his former school teacher) wrangled Congressional funds to establish a White House library. The two amassed the home’s first permanent collection during Fillmore’s single term as president.
Sadly, Abigail caught a cold at the inauguration of her husband’s successor, Franklin Pierce, and died several weeks later. Millard Fillmore soon remarried and traveled widely in Europe with his second wife Caroline, with the hope that a milder climate would benefit her chronic health problems. He retained an interest in public affairs, and was even nominated to the presidency again in 1856 by the American—or Know-Nothing—Party, but was unsuccessful. He remained in good health into his later years, saying, “My health is perfect. I eat, drink and sleep as well as ever, and take a deep but silent interest in public affairs, and if Mrs. Fillmore’s health can be restored, I should feel that I was in the enjoyment of an earthly paradise.”
Sign marking Millard Fillmore’s grave
While trying to shave on the morning of February 13, 1874, the seventy-four-year-old Fillmore lost all sensation in the left side of his body. He had just suffered his first stroke. He regained partial use of his left side until he was stricken with a second stroke later that month. This time his throat muscles were severely affected, limiting his ability to swallow. Shortly before his death, in response to a doctor’s question about the food he was given, Fillmore responded with his last words, “The nourishment is palatable.” On March 8, Fillmore fell unconscious and died. At the announcement of his death, President Ulysses S. Grant issued a proclamation honoring the former president