Micah Taul

Micah Taul (May 14, 1785 – May 27, 1850) was an American pioneer, planter, lawyer, and politician who served one term in the United States House of Representatives for Kentucky. He was born on May 14, 1785, in Bladensburg, Maryland. In 1787, when he was still a child, Taul moved with his parents to Kentucky, a frontier region in the early years following the American Revolution and the establishment of the United States. Growing up in this developing area, he attended private school, as no public school system had yet been established in the region. His early life on the Kentucky frontier helped shape his later career as a lawyer, local official, and military officer.

Taul pursued legal studies in the traditional manner of the time, likely by “reading law” under the supervision of an established attorney and serving as a legal apprentice rather than attending a formal law school. He was admitted to the bar in 1801, at a notably young age, and commenced the practice of law in Monticello, Kentucky, the county seat of Wayne County. That same year he was appointed Clerk of Wayne County Courts, an important local administrative and judicial position that placed him at the center of county legal affairs. He married and had a family, establishing himself as both a professional and a household head in the growing community.

During the War of 1812, Taul played an active role in the local military effort. He raised and outfitted troops from his region and served as a colonel of the Wayne County Volunteers. In this capacity he contributed to the defense and military mobilization of Kentucky during a conflict that was particularly significant on the western frontier. His leadership in organizing volunteers and providing for their equipment reflected both his local influence and his commitment to the national cause at a time of renewed tension with Great Britain.

Taul entered national politics in the aftermath of the war. In 1814 he was elected as a Democratic-Republican, historically referred to as a member of the Republican Party of that era, to the Fourteenth Congress, representing Kentucky in the United States House of Representatives. He served one term in Congress from March 4, 1815, to March 3, 1817. His service in Congress occurred during a significant period in American history, as the nation adjusted to the end of the War of 1812, debated issues of national finance, internal improvements, and westward expansion, and continued to define the balance of power between the federal government and the states. As a member of the Republican Party representing Kentucky, Micah Taul contributed to the legislative process during his term in office, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his constituents. He declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1816 and returned to private life at the close of his term.

After leaving Congress, Taul resumed the practice of law in Kentucky. In 1826 he moved with his family to Winchester, Tennessee, a community near the southern border of the state. There he continued to practice law for approximately twenty years, becoming a well-established attorney in his new locality. His relocation reflected the broader patterns of migration and settlement in the antebellum South, as professionals and planters sought new opportunities in emerging towns and counties across the region.

In 1846 Taul moved again, this time to Mardisville, Alabama, an area that had become a center of cotton cultivation and had previously been part of the homeland of the Creek people before their displacement. In Mardisville he operated a cotton plantation for several years, relying on enslaved labor in keeping with the plantation economy of the Deep South. He continued this work until his death on May 27, 1850, on his plantation in Mardisville. He was interred on his plantation there. Taul’s later years thus reflected the economic and social structures of the antebellum South, in which law, landholding, and slavery were closely intertwined.

Micah Taul’s family continued his political legacy into the next generation. He was the grandfather of Taul Bradford, who later represented Alabama in the United States Congress and served the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Through his own service as a lawyer, local official, military officer, and member of Congress, and through the subsequent public career of his grandson, Taul’s life illustrates the connections between early national politics, frontier settlement, and the evolving political landscape of the nineteenth-century American South.