Henry Augustine Tayloe

Henry Augustine Tayloe (April 8, 1808 – July 15, 1903) was an American planter, slaveholder, horse breeder and racer, and land speculator in Alabama during the 19th century. A younger son of John Tayloe III of The Octagon House and Mount Airy, a wealthy planter in Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland; after living in Maryland for a time after graduating from UVA the young Tayloe went to Alabama in 1834, where he was among the pioneers in developing slave labor cotton plantations in the Canebrake region. He also acted as a land agent, acquiring numerous plantations in the area for investment by his four older brothers, who were also extremely wealthy. A committed breeder and racer of horses, in 1838 he founded the Fair Grounds Race Course near New Orleans with Bernard de Marigny. He had St. Andrew's Episcopal Church (1853) built in Prairieville with enslaved labor. He later founded the town of Faunsdale, Alabama, named after a nearby plantation. Birth, schooling and career Tayloe was born on April 8, 1808, at The Octagon House, the youngest son of five of John Tayloe III and his wife. His father had commissioned the construction of this city residence in Washington, D.C. The boy was named in part named for his uncle, Captain William Augustine Washington, son of Augustine Washington Jr., and Anne Aylett, a nephew of George Washington. Tayloe's father had inherited the vast colonial estate Mount Airy in Richmond County, Virginia, developed by his own father Colonel John Tayloe II, and other plantations in multiple counties in Virginia and Maryland. John Tayloe II and John Tayloe III were the wealthiest plantation owners in the state of Virginia, Virginia being the wealthiest colony, for their generations. Tayloe's maternal grandfather was Benjamin Ogle, ninth Governor of Maryland, and great-grandfather was former Provincial governor, Samuel Ogle.