Ambrose Madison

• General Notes
  • In 1721, Ambrose Madison (James Madison's grandfather) married Frances Taylor, who came from a prominent landowning family in Virginia. Frances was the daughter of James Taylor and an ancestor of future President Zachary Taylor. James Taylor had been a companion of Governor Spotswood and had been one of the members of the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe in 1716. This land surveying expedition, which had crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains into the Shenandoah Valley, took possession of the land between the Blue Ridge and the ocean in the West in the name of King George I of England. Those who had been part of the expedition then began to stake out claims to the land that had been surveyed, James Taylor being among them.
    
    Taylor worked on building a 13,500-acre estate. In 1723, Taylor probably pointed out some of the best 4,675 acres of land for his two sons-in-law, Thomas Chew and Ambrose Madison, to patent jointly. This land would be part of the Madison estate originally called Mount Pleasant. When James Taylor's son, James Taylor, Jr., moved onto another portion of his father's estate, the Taylor, Chew, and Madison families became a small community in themselves, all living within a few short miles of each other.
    
    In 1732, Ambrose and Frances, now with three children, moved onto their plantation, Mount Pleasant. About six months later, however, Ambrose died suddenly. Frances was left, at the age of thirty-two, with three small children, an estate of about 2,337 and a half acres, much of which still needed to be developed, and twenty-nine slaves, fourteen of them being children. She was not entirely on her own, however, since members of her family surrounded her on nearby plantations, offering her protection, advice, and help with the estate. Frances took over the responsibilities of running the plantation and within a few years, had begun marketing tobacco in England.
    
    President James Madison’s handwritten genealogy says that his grandfather was Ambrose Madison and that Ambrose Madison’s parents (and his ancestors) were John Madison and “Isabella Minor Todd”.  If Isabella’s maiden name was Minor and she was previously married to a Mr. Todd, then it is quite possible that John Maddison, Jr., was previously married too before he married Isabella and that John Maddison, Jr., had some children by his unknown first wife.  John Maddison, Jr., died sometime between the 16 June 1714 joint land patent to him and Daniel Coleman and 24 March 1725/26 when his son, John Madison, III, received a land patent of the Madison portion of the same land in which it refers to his father as being deceased.

Click here for details of Ambrose's family with Frances Taylor

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