Jennie Fox-Taylor (Walker) - Jennie Ta

I see those hyphenated names, and they so rarely match the records. I think some women called themselves by hyphens socially, so we start thinking everyone did.

A British soldier named Charles Taylor fathered children by two Cherokee women. He claimed to be an illegitimate son of someone in the prominent Fox family in England, and his sons had ‘Fox’ as a middle name. No hyphen ever, and I think the claim was bogus, but back then no DNA and he was a long way from England for anyone to argue the point.

That’s a great story. So he’s not in Burke’s? :)

Ummm, no! He’s listed on the military rosters as just Charles Taylor, but he told everyone he was a Fox, and one son, who was a Loyalist, got land in the Bahamas with the same claim.

I don’t even know if he was born here or in England. According to one story he came to America as a child with his mother. That part may be true, she could have come as an indentured servant. A single woman with a child certainly couldn’t make it on her own in early South Carolina. Charles never went (back) to England, and died as a half-pay lieutenant in Charleston just before the Revolutionary War.