Career
She was the stepdaughter of Colonel James A. Doughty, who served as a captain in the 1st Regiment Tennessee Volunteer Infantry at Camp Dick Robinson in Kentucky. Loyalty to the Federal Government was a crime in the South.
On September 20, 1861, Taylor fled her home in Eastern Tennessee by foot, then crossed the Kentucky border a few days later.
In an autobiographical essay, she writes that she was unanimously elected Daughter of the 1st Tennessee Regiment. She traveled with the company at the Battle of Camp Wildcat.
She was arrested on June 19, 1862 in Jacksonboro, Georgia as a Union spy.