"Surrounded by Dangers of All Kinds": The Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Theodore Laidley Page: ix
xxiv, 185 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.View a full description of this book.
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Early Life of T. T. S. Laidley
Lieutenant Theodore Thadeus Sobieski Laidley was a young
army officer during the Mexican War, and like so many of his
fellow soldiers he wrote long letters home describing all the new
and unusual sights he saw and events he experienced. He told of
landing at Veracruz,' on the Mexican coast in March 1847, and
assisting in the reduction of that important port city. He gallantly
commanded a field battery at Cerro Gordo the following month
as Major General Winfield Scott began his march into the inte-
rior of Mexico, with the capital city as his ultimate goal. The young
lieutenant did not accompany Scott all the way into the valley of
Mexico, but remained with the garrison at Puebla, where his ac-
tions were instrumental in denying that city to Santa Anna in a
month-long siege in the fall of 1847.
John Osborne Laidley and Mary Scales Hite Laidley were
among the earliest settlers of Cabell County along the Ohio
River in far western Virginia. It was there, in the village of
Guyandotte, that Theodore Laidley was born on April 14, 1822.
He was the third of twelve children and the first son.
Theodore's ultimate decision to seek a military career was
merely in keeping with family custom, and might even have been
expected. His grandfather, Thomas Laidlaw, had emigrated to
North America from Scotland as a young man of eighteen in
1774. This put him here on the very eve of the American Revo-
lution, and although some members of his family remained loyal
to King George III he cast his lot with the colonists and enlisted
in George Washington's army. He changed his surname to
Laidley, so the story goes, so as not to be confused with the
Loyalist branch of his family. Theodore's father, John, contin-
ued the military tradition, or perhaps it was just an anti-British
tradition, by serving for a time with a company of Virginia vol-
unteer artillery during the War of 1812.2
ix
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McCaffrey, James M., 1946- & Laidley, Theodore, 1822-1886. "Surrounded by Dangers of All Kinds": The Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Theodore Laidley, book, 1997; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28333/m1/11/: accessed April 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.