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BIOGRAPHIES
Source:
History
Source:
A History of Scioto County, Ohio
together with a
PIONEER RECORD
of
SOUTHERN OHIO
by
NELSON W. EVANS, A. M.,
Life Member of The Ohio state Archaeological and Historical Society.
Member of the Virginia Historical Society, and of the
American Historical Association
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Published
Portsmouth, Ohio
by Nelson W. Evans
1903
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ADDISON TAYLOR
was born in Harrisonville, Scioto county, Ohio, Mar.
17, 1866, a son of Martyn Taylor, M. D. and Lydia J.
draper, his wife. Several of his paternal ancestors were
soldiers of the Revolutionary War and his father was an acting
assistant surgeon in the Civil war. Addison was
educated in the common schools of the county and was a teacher for
eight years, the last four of which he taught in the grammar grades
at Sciotoville. He has been a consistent political
prohibitionist since arriving at his majority, never having voted
any other ticket on a state, or national election, and has been a
candidate for various offices in the county on the Prohibition
ticket. He has been a member of the Methodist church for
eighteen years. In 1890, he was married to Miss Anna
Frank, of Sciotoville. They have two children: Wendell
and, Ella. Mr. Taylor is secretary and treasurer of the
Scioto Star Brick Works, west of Sciotoville, and has been connected
with the company for ten years, having worked his way up from a
laborer in the yard. A good part of his time is spent
traveling over the country selling fire brick. He has a large
business acquaintance among the iron and steel trades. He is
active in church work and what might be termed a "radical" in his
opinions.
Source: History of Scioto Co., Ohio - Publ.
1907 - Page 1154 |
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HARRY EDMUND TAYLOR
was born in McConnellsville, Morgan county, Ohio, Sept. 29, 1873.
He was the son of William and Frances Bell Taylor. William
Taylor was the owner of various salt furnaces in the Muskingum
valley, and was the first democrat elected to office in Morgan
county after the war, being elected Sheriff in 1883. The
subject of this sketch graduated from the McConnellsville schools in
1889, and then entered the office of the Morgan county "Democrat,"
where he learned the printer's trade. In 1891, he became a
reporter on the Akron, Ohio, "World" and the Akron "Beacon and
Republican." In 1894, Mr. Taylor came to Portsmouth to
take charge of the city news work on the Portsmouth Daily Times,
about to be started by J. L. Patterson. He has held
that position up to the present time. In 1898, he, with
Vallee Harold purchased the controlling interest in the Times
Publishing Company and upon the organization of the company Mr.
Taylor was chosen Secretary and Treasurer. He married Dec.
5, 1899, Leah Pauline, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Harry H.
Grimes, of Portsmouth, Ohio.
Source: History of Scioto Co., Ohio - Publ.
1907 - Page 1156 |
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JAMES LANDON TAYLOR, M. D.
The Taylors are of English ancestry and settled first on
coming from England in the state of Connecticut, in the early part
of the 18th century. From there this branch emigrated to the
wilds of central New York, where we find James Taylor, the
grandsire of this sketch, organizing a Methodist Episcopal church in
or about Elmira, then called Newtown, in 1807. His mother
Anna Landon, was a member of the Landon family, now
widely distributed through the United States. About 1835, he
came to scioto county with his family, one daughter, Olive,
and seven sons, two of whom preceded him. Of the sons, four
also became Methodist ministers: James, Harvey, William and
Landon, the latter marrying Jane Vincent, daughter of
A. C. Vincent, one of the original French Grant settlers.
Landon and was took up their residence at Franklin furnace,
Ohio, where the subject of this sketch was born Feb. 1, 1840.
Owing to the invalidism of his mother, the infant was
taken by his maternal aunt, Mrs. John S. Baccus, near
Wheelersburg, and reared in that family. Here he learned to
speak French, which he ever after cultivated. His first
recollection of school life was going to a subscription school in
Wheelersburg, taught by Miss Elizabeth Crichton.
At the age of fifteen, he obtained a certificate to
teach school and taught his first school in the Kettles district in
1856, at $33 1-3 per month. Mr. A. J. Finney,
afterwards Sheriff and County Clerk, was one of Doctor Taylor's
pupils as well as many other gray-headed men and women out in that
district which comprises part of four townships: Vernon, Bloom,
Harrison and Porter. When the winter term was over,
young Taylor started for a term in college. After
completing the Junior year of his college course in Delaware, Ohio,
young Taylor obtained from President Merrick an
honorable dismissal, and a certificate of standing in college so
flattering that it virtually passed him into the University of
Michigan, where he graduated in 1863. From that time until
1870 he spent teaching, and in 1872, took the degree of M. D. in the
Ohio Medical College in Cincinnati. He then took up the
practice of medicine in Wheelersburg, Ohio, following Doctor
Arthur Titus where he has resided ever since.
In 1867, he married Melissa Folsom, of Green
township, a daughter of J. S. Fulsom, whose biography appears
in this volume. There were born to them one daughter and two
sons, both of the latter being physicians. The daughter
Katy, died unmarried in 1900. The older son, Wesley,
is rounding up his medical and literary educaton in the universities
and hospitals of Europe, and the younger son John has a
similar course in prospect.
Doctor Taylor has now been identified with
Wheelersburg, Porter township and vicinity, as a teacher, farmer,
doctor and well known citizen for nearly half a century. For
eleven years consecutively he served on the School Board. In
March, 1870, he succeeded Captain N. W. Evans as County
Examiner serving for nearly a year on the Board with Doctor Burr
and John Bolton. He is a member of the local medical
societies, the National Association and the American Academy of
Medicine, the Vice Presidency of which he held from 1901-2. He
is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, and is planning to attend the International Medical
Congress of Tuberculosis to be held in Paris in 1903.
Doctor Taylor is still engrossed with the cares
of his business, his lands and his profession, leading even a busier
life than when he set out in the practice of his profession thirty
years ago. He is of athletic build, six feet in height, an
active mover, a republican in politics and a protestant in religion.
Doctor Taylor is in no way responsible for what follows in
this sketch. He is a very difficult subject to make a
character estimate of and do him justice. The reason of that
is, there are so many points of view, and our subject will show up
well from any of them. Doctor Taylor is a well educated
man. He has been trained to think and investigate. His
mind is like a wonderful piece of mechanism. It is bound to
accomplish certain results. Give him a subject to Investigate
and reason out and he will first ascertain all the facts and then he
will reach the most logical and wisest conclusion. He was not
only trained to this but he was given himself a thorough course of
self-discipline and training. The facts he learns are always
available to him. They will come to him and he can use them at
any time. The Doctor has a reputation as a first class
business man and financier. It was because he knows how to
reason on predicates and thereby anticipate results. In all
things he undertakes he does his work thoroughly. He never
acts until he knows the uttermost facts, and when he has learned
them all, he reasons out a course to pursue and that course is
unerringly the wisest which could have been discovered or chosen.
When he comes to a conclusion, he has faith in it and never
hesitates. This habit of thought and action avails him in
every thing he undertakes whether it be farming, medicine,
literature or finance.
The Doctor is one of those rare characters who would
succeed in anything they undertake. He is a first class
farmer, he stands at the top of his profession and as a financier
and business man he has no superior. The editor believes he
would have acquired national distinction as a medical or historical
writer, but no one could justly say that Doctor Taylor has
missed his calling. To a layman, his medical essays, mentioned
in the Bibliography of this work, show that he is a mater of every
subject he has treated and that on a condition of facts given, his
hypotheses are the most consistent with the highest wisdom in his
profession, and his ideas are the most advanced. the esteem in
which the Doctor is held by the fellow members of his profession,
show that the layman's ideas of him are correct. But the
Doctor is not only fortunate and successful in handling medical
subjects; some years ago he was a contributor to the Ohio Farmer and
his articles on Tariff Reform were unanswerable. He can write
an essay on the money question which would command the respectful
consideration of the best financiers. He would be equally
interesting in writing on stock raising. The editor has read
all of the Doctor's essays on Medical Topics with great interest and
believes that the community in which he dwells does not appreciate
his learning or his acquirements in his profession. Fifty
years from not his learning and talent will be appreciated. As
the Doctor has taken good care of himself in his present life, in
the life hereafter, he will not be concerned at the failure to
appreciate him while living. His neighbors do appreciate him
now as a business man, and they have the utmost confidence in him in
his profession, but they will never realize the extent of his
acquirements until he has passed beyond this life and his finished
career can be compared with others.
Source: History of Scioto Co., Ohio - Publ.
1907 - Page 1154-1156 |
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LAFAYETTE TAYLOR
was born Dec. 25, 1856, in Susquehanna, county, Pennsylvania, near
the town of that name. His parents were William and Mary E.
(Kelley) Taylor, who resided on East Mountain in Gibson
township, in the above named county. William Taylor was
a son of Amos and Dolly (Starks) Taylor. They settled
about a mile below Smiley, Pennsylvania, on the west side of
Tunkhannock, soon after 1800. Amos was the son of
David and Mercy Taylor, who settled at Smiley about 1804, and
built a hotel which was then one of the three frame houses in Gibson
township. Mr. Taylor is one of a family of twelve
children. John F. resides at Scranton, Pa.
Sarah Jane married S. C. Avery, and is deceased.
Josiah resides on the old home farm in Pennsylvania and was in a
construction corps during the Civil war. Freeman F. is
a railroad contractor and a ranchman at Colorado City, Colorado.
Leslie D. is deceased. Leroy Eugene resides in
Lackawanna county and is the overseer of a coal breaker at Winter,
Pa. William K. resides at Ottawa, Kansas.
Volney E. is a lumberman at Doane, West Virginia.
During the early years of our subject's boyhood, he
worked on a farm and attended the district school. He very
early developed the propensity and desire to make money. This
is evidenced by the fact that when he had reached the age of
sixteen, he had accumulated the sum of $400 or what would be
considered a good fortune for a boy of that age. But with this
desire for money came an overwhelming desire for a better education
than he could obtain at home. In company with a boy friend of
his age and against the will of his parents, he came to Oberlin,
Ohio, to attend school. But a term there somewhat discouraged
him; he thought an education should be obtained in a more rapid
manner so he left this school intending to take up study again in
some other school. In the meantime, he went to work chopping
wood and sawing logs for a saw mill until school should open again.
This was his first experience in the lumber business. When the
time for entering school again came around, he did not go; but
continued to work and save. Month after month passed away and
all the time the desire to make money was overcoming and crowding
out the desire for an education, until at the end of three years, he
gave up his intention to educating himself and embarked upon his
money making career which has been somewhat phenomenal and
characteristic of all similar careers. In a short time he had
saved sufficient money to buy several yoke of cattle and began
taking logging contracts in Pike county. Success crowned his
undertakings and soon he began to buy timber in tracts and to have
it sawed, doing the logging himself.
In 1880, he came to Rarden, which has been the scene of
his activities since, and which owes its growth and prosperity in
large part to him. In 1885, he gave up logging and took up his
residence in Rarden, having married the previous year. Here he
opened a small store and engaged in the buying and shipping of
lumber and at the same time owning and operating several sawmills.
He became a partner with Guilford Marr in the cooperage
business in 1887. From this year until 1891, he had on hands
at all times the enormous quantity of 2,000,000 feet of sawed lumber
and his output each year during this time was 2,500,000 feet.
Besides this quantity of sawed lumber, he handled railroad ties,
tanbark and all kinds of lumber products. His trade gradually
branched out until he had practical control of the lumber business
in this section and nine-tenths of all the lumber shipped from
Rarden in the last fifteen years has passed through his hands and
has added thousands to his coffers. From 1887 to the present
time he has reaped the harvest from something like 50,000,000 feet
of lumber.
In 1895, he became the chief stockholder in the Rarden
Stone Company, incorporated that year. He is exclusive owner
of the Rarden Stone Mill. He owns a controlling interest in
the Taylor Cooperage company. He is an equal partner with
Charles S. Brown in the Taylor-Brown Timber Company.
He owns and operates a large general store at Rarden. In 1900,
he bought several thousand acres of valuable timber in Wayne county,
West Virginia, and has since been engaged in sawing and marketing
it.
Mr. Taylor is a republican and has always been
such. He takes a deep interest in the management of local and
national affairs, but is not a politician in any sense. His
whole time is devoted to his numerous interests.
He was married July 4, 1884, to Almeda McNeal, a
daughter of Joseph and Mary (Watrous) McNeal of Pike county,
Ohio. They have one child living, Volney S. born Mar.
27, 1886. He is now in school at Valparaiso, Ind.
Another child, Lynn, was born May 8, 1888 and died in
infancy. His first wife died Nov. 22, 1888, and he was again
married to Lucinda McNeal, a sister to his former wife, Jan.
27, 1890.
Mr. Taylor is a man of strong and rugged build
and has exceptional powers of physical endurance. He is always
active and pushes his work and never lets it push him. the one
great secret of his success is his exhaustless, tireless energy.
Coupled with this his admirable ability to keep well in hand and
manage his diverse business interests. He has exceptional
business judgment and tact and during the years of his rapid
advancement in the business world it has been employed to a
wonderful advantage. He is the embodiment of honor and
integrity honest with himself, with his neighbor, with his
employes and with those with whom he has business transactions. Some
have a deep religious nature and a total lacking of the moral nature
and vice versa; others have both in varying degrees, though one
predominates. In our subject we find but a moderate degree of
the religious but an unusually sensitive moral nature which answers
the purpose which the religious nature does in others.
Consequently we have a man liberal in thought about things
supernatural but radical in questions of right and justice. He
should be a shining example for the young man who has nothing but
his hands and a sound mind and body for capital to start on.
Source: History of Scioto Co., Ohio - Publ.
1907 - Page 1156 |
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REV. LANDON TAYLOR.
The Taylors in New York were a Methodist family.
Rev. James, a Methodist minister for thirty-seven years, with
his wife Julia A. Hathaway, came to Scioto County and settled
near Little Scioto about 1835. There were seven sons and one
daughter, four of the sons also becoming Methodist ministers, among
whom was Landon, who was born in 1812.
Soon after coming to Ohio, Landon engaged in school
teaching near Haverhill, at $25.00 a month, making his home with
J. S. Folsom. Later, having marriage Jane Vincent,
daughter of one of the French emigrants in 1837, he secured
employment as clerk at Franklin Furnace. The Furnace Company
soon after failed, carrying with it all his earnings amounting to
$1,200. Stranded financially, and his family broken up by the
confirmed invalidism of his wife, he preached for a few years among
the furnaces, at Burlington and Wheelersburg where he labored with
Murphy in the great revival of 1843. In 1845 he went to
the territory of Iowa, and becoming indentified with the Upper Iowa
Conference passed the most of his life there, filling appointments
at Burlington, Davenport, Dubuque, Iowa City and many other
important charges. For a time he was Presiding Elder of the
Sioux City district, was Conference Evangelist for some years, then
Bible Agent until on account of failing health, he superannuated.
In 1883 he published his autobiography under the title of "The
Battlefield Reviewed" of which he disposed of two editions. A
portion of his last years he spent with his son, Doctor J. L.
Taylor of Wheelersburg, where he died in 1885.
His religious faith was intense, and of the now
disappearing type of Wesleyan Methodism. He had a grand voice
for public speaking, an earnest manner, a fine physique, and withal,
was a most genial and interesting companion. His life work was
largely one of self sacrifice, since no motives of remuneration, or
the lack of it, had the slightest influence in his acceptance of
ecclesiastical positions. The joy of his life was that he had
contributed to start a number of young people into a religious life
who afterwards came into positions of great influence and usefulness
in the Christian church.
Source: History of Scioto Co., Ohio - Publ.
1907 - Page 838 |
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MARTYN TAYLOR, M. D.,
of Sciotoville, Ohio, was born in the town of Lewis, Essex county,
New York, in 1828. His father Theodore Taylor was the
son of Eliphalet Taylor, a soldier of the Revolution who was
conspicuous for bravery at the battle of Bennington. The
mother of our subject, whose maiden name was Lucy Jane Ballou,
was a descendent of Maturin Ballou who came from Devonshire,
England in 1640 to the province of Rhode Island and was largely
influential in shaping the policy of this province. Hosea
Ballou, the mother of President Garfield, and she, are of
the same branch of the Ballou family. The boyhood and
youth of Doctor Taylor to the age of young manhood, were
passed in his native state where he received an academic education.
At the age of eighteen years, the death of his father threw him upon
his own resources, and he began, single handed to strike out for
himself, making his home in Adrian, Michigan. Enrolling
himself as a student in the Medical College of the University of
Michigan, he worked his way through that institution by teaching in
the intervals of lectures and received a degree of Doctor of
Medicine in the spring of 1852.
Mar. 27, 1853, he married Miss Lydia Jane Draper
and began the practice of his profession at Danby, Dupage county,
Illinois. He located in Scioto county, Ohio, in 1860.
His three children are: Ella born Apr. 15, 1854,
married A. H. Stephenson, M. D., a resident of Fort Recovery,
Ohio; Addison Taylor, born Mar.
17, 1866, a commercial traveler and head of the sales department of
the Scioto Star Fire Brick Works of Sciotoville, Ohio; Martyn
Taylor, Jr., born Jan. 28, 1869, a physician and surgeon
residing in Fort Recovery, Ohio.
On Sept. 12, 1861 he enlisted in Company E, 33rd O. V.
I. and took part in the campaign on Big Sandy and in the battles of
Perryville and Stone River. He was discharged May 28, 1863, by
order of the department, to accept the position of Acting Assistant
Surgeon. Returning home in 1864, he served as enrolling
officer during the summer of that year, and after completing the
draft of Harrison township on Sept. 2, enlisted in Company F, 1st O.
V. H. A. After his re-enrollment in September, 1864, he was
detailed as Acting Assistant Surgeon for a detachment of four
companies of his regiment, station at Chickamauga Junction, six
miles south of Chattanooga and at stations between that point and
Grayville, Georgia, on the railroad south of the Junction. His
surgical duties ceased when these four companies rejoined their
regiment, with which he remained until June 20, 1865, when he was
discharged.
He has always been a republican but has never sought
office. His highest ambition has been to attain the greatest
excellence in his profession. He is a member of the Methodist
Episcopal church. After thirty years of laborious practice, he
is disabled from further work, by disabilities resulting from
military service, and is simply waiting for his summons.
Source: History of Scioto Co., Ohio - Publ.
1907 - Page 1158 |
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