Moses Bledsoe and Sophia Taylor

by Milancie H. Adams  

Moses Owsley Bledsoe was born 6 Feb 1788 and died in Springfield, Illinois 17 Nov 1851. Moses was the son of Patience Owsley and Rev William Bledsoe, a Baptist clergyman, who moved his family from Virginia to Kentucky seeking religious freedom. 

As a youth Moses served apprenticeship under W. R. Hunter.   When his father died five hundred acres were given to his older half brother Joseph and the rest of his vast holdings were equally divided between the remaining children. Moses also received a mare and her colt. 

Moses was described in his son’s Albert Bledsoe Papers (Illinois State Historical Society Transactions) as being "strikingly handsome, pleasure-loving, jovial soul, bubbling over with fun, and with no religious leanings.” On 4 Jan 1809 in Franklin County, Kentucky he married Sophia Childress Taylor, daughter of Samuel Taylor, who was a member of the Kentucky State Legislature, and his wife Elizabeth Hughes. Sophia was born 19 Oct 1792 and died 19 Jan 1879 in Chicago, Illinois . 

One of Sophia's first beaus, who was later a Governor of Kentucky, wrote that she was probably the most brilliant mind he had ever known. Her son Albert Taylor Bledsoe writes the same type of thing. Her granddaughter wrote "She was not at all handsome, lacked imagination and was entirely wanting in a sense of humor; but she had  a masculine intellect, a keen sense of justice, a courage which was heroic and an invincible will for the right.  She became a devout Christian of quite modern type; full of charity and love and self-forgetfulness.” 

Another picture of this couple's personalities is given in a portrait of their eldest son.  It was written that "he inherited from his mother his mental power and passionate love of truth;  from his father his unstable temper and keen sense of humor; from both his quickness to see a situation and promptitude at meeting it, as also his mental and physical courage.” (Illinois State Historical Society Transactions for the Year 1934) 

Moses worked as agent for the State Penitentiary in Frankfort, Kentucky in July of 1809, after his father-in-law resigned the position. He also served in the War of 1812. In 1826 he was appointed clerk of court in Carrollton, Greene County, Illinois where he became a prominent landowner. After that he operated the Missouri Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1837 he became an Episcopal minister and moved to Lexington Kentucky.  In addition he served as a commissioner of school land. Moses also founded and edited the noted Kentucky newspaper The Commonwealth and was public printer to the state. 

Sometime soon after they again settled in Illinois and are found on the census there beginning in 1840. Just before his death in 1851 they lived with their daughter Elizabeth and husband Thomas Condell, a banker in Springfield, Illinois.