William Oldham

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 potentially William Oldham, though this cannot be confirmed. 

Evidence for Oldham working in the White House comes from a memoir written by newspaper reporter and Taylor supporter Benjamin Perley Poore who wrote in 1886 that Taylor’s wife, First Lady Margaret Taylor, brought Oldham, one of the family’s enslaved workers, with her to Washington, D.C., from Louisiana to serve him in the White House. Perley refers to Oldham as “a faithful colored man who had been the body-servant of General Taylor for many years.”¹ Perley made this claim more than thirty years after Taylor’s presidency, and there is no contemporary evidence placing Oldham in the White House during Taylor’s tenure as president.² It is possible Perley confused Oldham with Charles Porter, an enslaved person owned by Zachary Taylor who is confirmed to have worked as the president’s body-servant. However, records do reveal that there was an enslaved man named William Oldham who was born in Virginia around 1825 and who was forcibly moved to New Orleans and sold in the slave markets there in 1844, which would make it possible for Taylor or his family to have purchased Oldham prior to his election to the president.³ 

Little else is known about Oldham at this time.