“BETTY BLISS”
Mary Elizabeth “Betty” Taylor Dandridge
Winchester, VA – May 25, 1862
In May of 1862, Betty Dandridge sat in the front parlor of her home in downtown Winchester. She was reading a book when her husband came in to tell her that a battle had just begun around Mr. Wood’s farm. A distant rumble is felt and the wavy glass panels shook within their double-hung frames that looked out over Braddock Street. Betty looks out, and calmly goes back to her book.
Betty Taylor Dandridge was the third daughter of President Zachary Taylor. Betty married Colonel William Bliss in 1848, the same year her father won the presidency and moved into the White House. Betty’s mother, Margaret, refused to act as first lady and became a recluse within the White House. Betty would take over as first lady and host parties and dignitaries in a very simple, yet classy manner. She was noted for her grace and charm and the elegance of her entertainments and she was called “Betty Bliss”, not only because that was her name, but she brought joy to those she was around. President Taylor would die in office after only serving 16 months, and Colonel Bliss would die of yellow fever in 1853. Betty was devastated. In 1858, Betty would marry Philip Pendleton Dandridge and move to Winchester. They would build a stately brick home at 116 North Braddock Street and enjoy peace. Yet, in three years, the town would be entangled in war.
When the war broke out, Winchester was in relative peace as the Union army had yet to press into the valley. Even though Betty’s father was a US President, her loyalties were with the south. She had a sister Sarah Knox Taylor Davis, who was married to a young Jefferson Davis, but Sarah would die of yellow fever. She was only twenty-one years old. Betty’s only brother was Confederate General Richard "Dick" Taylor. On May 25, 1862, little did Betty know as she sat reading that book in her parlor, the distant rumbling was cannon fire in support of her brother’s “Louisiana Tigers” making a charge over the Wood farm at Glen Burnie. General Taylor would organize his men right around the Meadow Branch neighborhood entrance on Merriman’s Lane and sweep over the fields toward the water tower on Bower’s Hill.
Mary Elizabeth “Betty” Taylor Dandridge, or “Betty Bliss”, would live out her life on Braddock Street. She would also keep a sacred memento in this house, the red sash worn by General Braddock when he was mortally wounded at the Battle of the Monongahela. A historian wrote of the sash, “The history of the sash seems to be that on General Taylor’s sudden and unlooked-for death, all of his personal effects were placed in his army chest and remained there until at the death of his widow they were sent to Winchester, the home of Mrs. Dandridge, his only surviving daughter. There was no memoranda or inventory and no special thought given it. The civil war coming on they were forgotten, and it was only the other day, her attention being called to the subject, that search was had and it was found, carefully wrapped up in linen and labeled “Braddock’s sash,” together with her father’s two military sashes. It is of very dark red, soft silk, some 13 feet long by 4 in width. At either extremity, near the heavy silk tassels, wove into a horizontal band, is the date of 1709, and near the center are three dark black stains as large as a man’s hand, the marks of his life blood. “
Betty and her husband Philip Dandridge are both buried in Mount Hebron Cemetery.
