Burwell School for Girls - Hillsborough, NC

Burwell School - Hillsborough, NC

Yesterday was a road trip to Hillsborough where I took a quick tour of Burwell School for Girls.  Burwell School seems to be very alive with the activity of the shadows and light of history.  Several New Bern girls attended the school there including Sarah Cole Taylor, gggrandmother of singer James Taylor.

Elizabeth Keckley, a black slave at the time during her involvement with the Burwell family on these premises, became the seamstress and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, the wife of Abraham Lincoln.  Keckley's story is a somewhat sad one and she left an account in

"Behind the Scenes, by Elizabeth Keckley - Formerly a slave, but more recently modiste, and friend to Mrs. Lincoln or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House."  

Mrs. Keckley lost her friendship with Mrs. Lincoln over the publication of this book.

Here is a blurb about Sarah Cole Taylor which comes from the Burwell School website...

Sarah Ann Cole

  (1824-1900)

Story

Sarah married Alexander Taylor, who was the son of Isaac Taylor, Scottish immigrant to New Bern and renowned trader and merchant. Isaac is mentioned in the Patrick O’Brian seafaring novels.
Isaac cut Alexander out of his will for excessive drinking. Perhaps this explains Sarah and her sisters running a boarding house in Chapel Hill after the Civil War. Sarah had two sons, James Cole Taylor. b. 1855, and Isaac Montrose Taylor, 1857 – 1921, who was a physician and founder of Broadoaks Sanitorium in Morganton, NC. Sarah and Alexander were the great- grandparents of Dr. Isaac Taylor, dean of the Medical School at the University of North Carolina from 1964 - 1971, and great, great grandparents of singers James Taylor and Livingston Taylor.

http://www.burwellschool.org/research/pPerson.php?id=1295