Friday, June 3, was the birthday of President Jefferson Davis. Though born in Kentucky in 1808, he spent most of his productive years in Warren County. It is a long-standing tradition to honor him with a story about his life.

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From the bedroom window the grieving young man, too ill to leave his room, watched the solemn procession as the coffin was carried to the nearby family graveyard at Locust Grove Plantation near St. Francisville.

Their time together — the young man and his bride — had been so brief. Only three months earlier Jefferson Davis and Sarah Knox Taylor had pledged their love for one another “until death do us part.” So soon the bride of the storybook romance was dead, the victim of malaria.

Knox Taylor was six years younger than her husband. She was born at Vincennes, Ind., March 6, 1814. Her father, Col. Zachary Taylor, was stationed there, but much of her youth was spent at the home of her grandparents near Louisville, Ky., for educational and cultural advantages weren’t available at the frontier posts.

The lovely Knox joined her family at Fort Crawford in 1832, when she was 19. She was described as vivacious and charming. She was petite, had wavy brown hair and gray eyes. She was said to be “witty…clever…graceful as a nymph and the best dancer in the State of Kentucky.”

It was at Fort Crawford that she met Lt. Jefferson Davis, and soon he was spending a great deal of time at the Taylor home. There wasn’t any doubt the couple were hopelessly in love, and though Col. Taylor personally liked Davis, he had some reservations, for he realized the difficulties his family had endured because of his military career, and he vowed that none of his children should be subjected to such a married life.

Jeff and Knox were just as adamant in their love for one another, and a series of military transfers for him didn’t cool their ardor. He knew he couldn’t support a wife on his lieutenant’s salary so Davis, after a visit to his brother Joe at Hurricane Plantation south of Vicksburg, decided to leave the army. Perhaps this would placate his future father-in-law. Joe was indebted to his little brother concerning an inheritance and agreed to give him a plantation, which he called Brierfield. Davis’ separation from the army would be effective June 30, 1835.

Taylor gave his half-hearted approval of the marriage but he did not attend the ceremony, held at the home of Knox’s aunt near Louisville on June 17, 1835. Handwritten invitations were sent by servants to family and friends, but as they assembled, the wedding was postponed as a county clerk refused to issue a license, claiming the bride was a minor and her father didn’t approve. Knox’s uncle went to the courthouse, straightened out the misunderstanding, and though delayed the nuptials proceeded. Knox was agitated and Jeff nervous. Years later, some who were there said they sensed a forboding atmosphere and an impending disaster.

Any misgivings were short-lived. The couple took a steamboat trip to Mississippi, staying at Hurricane, and on Aug. 11, 1835, Knox wrote her parents of her perfect happiness. It was the last message they would receive from her.

When malaria became a threat in the swamp area at Davis Bend, a physician suggested they go to higher ground, so Jeff and Knox boarded a steamboat for Bayou Sara, La., and from there they would go inland to Locust Grove, his sister Anna’s plantation. They were both sick by the time they got there, and both were given medical help.

For a time it appeared that Jeff would die, that he was the sicker of the two, but he rallied and she grew worse. They were in adjoining rooms, and one night he heard her singing “Fairy Bells,” a song that had been popular during their courtship. Her fever rising, she had become delirious. Jeff struggled from his bed, entered her room and she took her final breaths as he held her in his arms. The date was Sept. 16, 1835, one day shy of three months since their wedding. The funeral was held in Jeff’s bedroom.

Under the care of his sister, Jeff improved. To his critical condition were added the complications of a broken heart and possibly a troubled conscience, for had he not he persisted in the wedding, had they not come to the swampy lands, Knox might still be alive.

It was over a month before Jeff could leave Locust Grove, traveling to New Orleans, then to Cuba, New York City and finally to Brierfield in Warren County. He worked his fields by day, along with his slaves, and at night he read, practically shutting himself away from society. Knox had been dead eight years, and he showed no signs of coming out of seclusion until he became interested in local politics. When the Democratic candidate dropped out of the race for the state legislature, Jeff agreed to take his place, making one speech on the Old Court House lawn on election day in November 1843.

He lost the race, as he expected, but he was an impressive candidate, and a Vicksburg newspaper predicted that he would yet make his mark in history. Soon he was caught up in the intrigue of party politics.

It was a fateful and fortunate happenstance when on a December day Jeff stopped at the home of his niece, Florida Davis McCaleb, at Diamond Place near Brierfield. There in the garden, admiring the winter blossoms, was a pretty girl who had come up from Natchez to visit her family friends, the Davises.

The girl was Varina Anne Banks Howell, and she wrote her mother a letter stating that she had met Jefferson Davis, a man she didn’t even know existed. She found him to be handsome, gallant, and courteous but sensed a certain reserve and an aloof charm. She wrote, “I do not know whether this Mr. Jefferson Davis is young or old. He looks both at times; but I believe he is old, for from what I hear he is only two years younger than you are. He impresses me as a remarkable kind of man, but of uncertain temper, and has a way of taking for granted that everybody agrees with him when he expresses an opinion, which offends me; yet he is most agreeable and has a peculiarly sweet voice and a winning manner of asserting himself. The fact is, he is the kind of person I should expect to rescue one from a mad dog at any risk, but to insist upon a stoical indifference to the fright afterward. I do not think I shall ever like him as I do his brother Joe. Would you believe it, he is refined and cultivated, and yet he is a Democrat!”

Varina was well-educated and pretty, and to add to that she was witty, translated Latin with ease, spoke French fluently, was well-versed in the classics — and was an excellent horseman. Though she was 17 and Jeff was 35, they were a fine match and were engaged within a few weeks. She changed her mind about possibly not liking him very much. It was a long engagement, and they were married Feb. 26, 1846, at her parents’ home in Natchez.

What an irony that the day before his wedding to Varina, on board the steamboat from Brierfield to Natchez, Jefferson Davis met Zachary and Margaret Taylor. Though he knew from his sister Anna that they had visited the grave of their daughter, he had not seen them since the days he courted Knox, nor had he communicated with them in the 10 years since her death.

Because of their shared grief, the two men became more than reconciled, for admiration and friendship developed. In later years Taylor was heard to say, “My daughter was a better judge of men than I.”

On their honeymoon trip, Jeff and Varina stopped at Locust Grove where they stood silently together at Knox’s grave. Varina gently placed flowers before they turned away, each with their own thoughts.

Knox and Varina: so much alike in so many ways, each loved by the same man, one for only a few months, the other for a lifetime. In this strange twist of fate, the Taylors loved Varina as a daughter, and 150 years later her great-great-great-granddaughter would be named Sarah Taylor in honor of the bride who would forever be 21.

In 1972 Theodore Olsen, author of the novel “There Was A Season,” the story of Jefferson Davis and Sarah Knox Taylor, wrote, “If there is a single pivotal event on which a man’s early life turns, for Jefferson Davis that event was the death of his young bride. It changed his whole character and in a sense his whole life. For seven year afterwards he was a recluse who bore his grief by developing a stoical and austere front that was later interpreted by many as coldness and disdain. Even sympathetic observers failed to guess the truth.”

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Gordon Cotton is an author and historian who lives in Vicksburg.