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Among the events listed each and almost every month at Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park are guided tours at Sabine Hill, the home of Mary Patton Taylor, widow of Brigadier General Nathaniel Taylor. The house, located on a grassy knoll outside of town at 2338 West G Street, is one of the finest examples of Federal architecture in the state of Tennessee.

Thousands pass by the stately mansion every day, but few have been inside one of the region’s oldest homes.

The staff of Sycamore Shoals Park seeks to change that by offering tours of the house. This month’s tours in addition to the tour today will be held August 6-10 at 10 a.m. and August 13 and 27 at 1:30 p.m. The cost is $10 for adults; $8 for ages 65 plus, veterans, and active military. The charge for children age 17 and under is $5. Registration is required.

Visitors to the home are reminded that accessibility to the house includes steps and an interior staircase.

In 2008 then Sycamore Shoals State Park Manager Jennifer Bauer helped convince the State of Tennessee to buy the house from two local residents – Helen Wilson and Sam LaPorte – who hastily purchased the home when a developer announced plans to level the house and build new homes on the site. Public opposition stopped that from happening and gave the state time to acquire the house, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Brigadier General Nathaniel Taylor, a member of one of the region’s founding families, served in the War of 1812 under Gen. Andrew Jackson. After the war, Taylor returned to Elizabethton (Happy Valley at that time) with plans to build an impressive home with the best that money could buy. However, most historians agree that Taylor’s wife, Mary Patton Taylor, completed the home in 1818 after her husband’s death.

According to one account, Mary Patton Taylor rode to the Watauga Settlement on a pony bought and taken to Virginia by Nathaniel for her. The young couple married in 1791 and settled on a part of the Andrew Taylor estate.

Gen. Taylor served in the Carter County Military and in 1796 was one of the commissioners named to lay off the county seat of Elizabethton. Taylor in 1893 succeeded Col. John Tipton as a member of the Tennessee Senate. He was also a trustee of Duffield Academy in Elizabethton.

Taylor’s descendants included military leaders, wealthy businessmen, and even two Tennessee governors – Alfred and Bob Taylor – along with Georgia Gov. Nathaniel Harris.

Gen. Taylor began building Sabine Hill between 1814 and 1816 after returning home from the war. The General had been one of the earliest settlers in Elizabethton, having arrived as a boy around 1780 when his family migrated from Rockbridge County, Va., to the settlement along the Watauga River.

The house is built on a two-story I-house plan with a five-bay front facade. It has a foundation of limestone quarried in the local area. The exterior walls are built from logs that are completely covered by clapboard siding. The floors are random-width pine laid over hand-hewn timber joists. There are brick chimneys on both ends of the structure.

Both Taylor and his wife are buried in the cemetery nearby. Gen. Taylor died in 1816 at the age of 45.

“Overall, the Taylors owned up to seven million acres of land on this continent,” said former park manager Bauer in a previous story. “It’s hard to overestimate just how influential this family was.”

After purchasing the home in 2008, the Tennessee Historical Commission restored the home and grounds. The two-story house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and was opened to the public on Nov. 1, 2017 as a unit of Sycamore Shoals State Park.