On 21 December 1846 he married Eliza Anderson née Pearce (the daughter of James Pearce, who married the niece of General George Rogers Clark) at the St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Louisville, they had fourteen children, including Robert Standard (b.1847), John (b.1848), Ellen Talbot (b.1850), Anne Pearce (b.1852), James Pearce (b.1854), Henry Pindell (b.1855), Margaret Blackburn (b.1857), William Bury (b.1859), Mary Bullock (b.1860), Frank (b.1861), Churchill Blackburn (b.1863), Jacqueline (b.1865), Jimmie (b.1865) and Eliza Pearce (b.1868).