Taliaferro

Taliaferro ( ), also spelled Talliaferro, Tagliaferro, Talifero, Taliafero, Taliferro or Tellifero and sometimes fully anglicised to Tolliver or Toliver, is a prominent family in eastern Virginia and Maryland. The Taliaferros (originally , which means 'Ironcutter' in Italian) are one of the early families who settled in Virginia in the 17th century. They migrated from London, where an ancestor had served as a musician in the court of Queen Elizabeth I. The surname in that line is believed to trace back to Bartholomew Taliaferro, a native of Venice and subject of the Doge of Venice, who settled in London and was made a denizen in 1562.

The origins of the Taliaferro name were of interest to George Wythe, a colonial Virginia lawyer and classical scholar, who had married Elizabeth Taliaferro, the daughter of architect Richard Taliaferro. Wythe urged his former student and friend Thomas Jefferson to investigate the name when Jefferson traveled to Italy. Jefferson later reported to Wythe that he had found two families of the name in Tuscany, and that the family was of Italian origin. Jefferson enclosed his sketch of the coat of arms of the Tagliaferro family as reported to him by a friend in Florence, Italy in 1786; shortly thereafter an engraved copperplate of the family arms was transported across the Atlantic and kept at the Wythe House, a historic landmark home built by Richard Taliaferro in Colonial Williamsburg in 1754. Provided by Wikipedia