Thomas Strother

One of the presidential households we know the least about is that of Zachary Taylor. Documentation is scarce, as most of his personal papers were lost when Union soldiers occupied his family’s plantation in Louisiana during the Civil War. Furthermore, Taylor’s tenure as president was short, as he died in office less than two years into his term, meaning he produced fewer records to begin with. As a result, only a handful of individuals have been identified as working at the Taylor White House. Records are even more scarce for the enslaved workers in President Taylor’s household. One of them was likely Thomas Strother. 

Strother was born into slavery around 1820 in Louisiana.¹ As a child, he was enslaved by Richard Taylor, but when Richard died in 1829, legal ownership of Strother passed to Richard’s son, Zachary Taylor.² Taylor was an officer in the U.S. Army and brought Strother with him to various army posts around North America. Army regulations at the time provided wages to officers to employ their own servants to cook for them, shave them, do their laundry, and perform other remedial tasks; if the servant was enslaved, as was the case with Strother, then the officer could pocket the wage themself and use it to provide food and clothing for the worker. Officers had to file paperwork to receive the wages, and Strother first appears in these pay vouchers in 1831 when Taylor was stationed at Fort Crawford in Wisconsin.³ Over the next two decades, Strother consistently appears in paperwork filed by Taylor, including when Taylor fought in the Second Seminole War in Florida and the Mexican American War. Strother’s uncle, Charles Porter, who served as Taylor’s valet, also regularly appeared in these pay vouchers.⁴ While it is unclear what exactly Strother's position was at the White House, he may have had similar responsibilities and performed the same duties for the president. 

Like many of the early slave owning presidents, Taylor brought some of his enslaved workers with him to the White House to serve him and his family and to supplement the free wage laborers. Evidence for Strother being at the White House comes from President Taylor’s will, which was drafted in 1846 and came into effect when he passed away in July 1850. The will bequeathed six “servants, slaves for life,” to Taylor’s wife, First Lady Margaret Taylor, among whom were “Tom” and his uncle Charles Porter.⁵ The fact that they were willed specifically to the first lady suggests they worked closely with her or the family. Records prove Charles Porter worked at the White House, so it is likely the others did as well.⁶

When Margaret Taylor passed away in 1852, Strother became the property of her son, Richard Taylor, who took Tom with him to Louisiana, where the Taylor family lived. During the Civil War, Richard Taylor served as a general in the Confederate Army; Strother accompanied him as his valet. After the war, Strother (then freed) returned to New Orleans with Richard. In a memoir written in 1879, Richard wrote that in New Orleans “Tom found his wife and children all right, and is now prosperous.”⁷ Census records and New Orleans city directories prove that Strother did, in fact, live in New Orleans during the 1870s, though after this he disappears from the historical record.⁸