Murray Forbes Taylor

He was a 17 year old student at VMI when he enlisted in Lexington on 20 April 1861 in the 13th Virginia Infantry (Colonel A.P. Hill). He was detailed to drill troops at Harpers Ferry, VA on 20 May. As a cadet, he was acting aide-de-camp (ADC) to General Elzey in May and June 1862. He was commissioned Lieutenant and ADC to General A.P. Hill on 14 June 1862.

From General A.P. Hill's Report:

My thanks are due my staff for their hearty co-operation and intelligent transmission of my orders under a fire frequently uncomfortably hot--Maj. R. C. Morgan, assistant adjutant-general; Major [R. J.] Wingate, Capt. R. H. T. Adams, signal officer; Lieut. Murray Taylor, aide-de-camp, and Lieutenant [C. H.] Camfield, of my escort.

He was promoted Captain, date not given. On 2 May 1863, at Chancellorsville, his horse was killed in the same friendly-fire volley that mortally wounded General "Stonewall" Jackson. He was with A.P. Hill until the General's death, then with General Longstreet until surrendered and paroled at Appomattox Court House, VA on 9 April 1865.

He was a farmer in King George County, VA to about 1871, then a cotton planter in Alabama, home of his new wife's family. He was at his father's estate, "Fall Hill", at Fredericksburg, VA from 1875-77, then went to Bakersfield, CA, and managed the estates of Mrs. Phoebe Apperson Hearst (mother of William Randolph Hearst) at San Simeon, CA, until retiring in 1908. He then returned to Virginia.

Service from Krick.1 His gravesite is on Findagrave. Details from Robert K. Krick's The Smoothbore Volley That Doomed the Confederacy (2002), a history of "Fall Hill" from genealogist Joanne Dickinson, and his obituary in the Confederate Veteran of February 1910. His picture from a copy of a tintype of him at the US Library of Congress. His wife was his cousin Butler Brayne Thornton (1847-1905). He's buried with her in Bakersfield.

12/24/1843; Falmouth, VA

11/20/1909; Fredericksburg, VA; burial in Union Cemetery, Bakersfield, CA