Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 4.djvu/640

day. James Taylor must have been a young man when he set foot in the greatly harassed colony of Jamestown, since his son, John Taylor, who carries on the line we are tra- cing, was not born for thirty-eight years thereafter.

(II ) Of John Taylor, the first of the name to be born on Virginia soil, we are not in a position to say much. He was born in the year 1696. This we know and some other elementary facts from the old records, which have been preserved in considerable volume by the old parish and court documents, which have found their way into a great number of libraries, both public and private. Of this John Taylor we also know that he married Catherine Pendleton, of the Virginia colony, and that of the ten children born to this union one, George Edmond, was the ancestor of the present Taylor family.

(III) George Edmond Taylor, son of John and Catherine (Pendleton) Taylor, was born in his parent's home in the colony of Virginia. He was a prominent man in the community, and had conferred upon him the Order of the Golden Horseshoe. In spite of his undoubted prominence we know but little more of him than of his father. He married Anne Lewis, and doubtless lived to witness the revolution.

(IV) Edmond Taylor, son of George Edmond and Anne ( Lewis ) Taylor, was born August 16, 1741. He was still a young man when the momentous- change occurred which changed his native Virginia and all her sister communities from colonies to independent states, which in their new found brotherhood joined to form the greatest confederation of states ever seen in the world Mr. Taylor married Ann Day, of Virginia, and thus introduced into the blood of his descendants a strain of one of the proudest and most distinguished of the Virginia families. Mrs. Edmond Taylor was a daughter of Major Day. a revolutionary officer who conducted himself with great gallantry in that sanguinary struggle, and served on the staff of General Washington himself.

(V) William Day Taylor, son of Edmond and Ann (Day) Taylor, was born in Hanover county, Virginia, in the year 1781. At the time of his birth Virginia was a sovereign Power and one of the United States, although the Treaty of Paris was not consummated until two years later, nor the evacuation of New York by the British. His youth was passed among those stirring years just subsequent to the revolution, when the institutions of the new nation were still in the process for formation and the brilliant intellects and forceful men of the day were bending every effort to give them permanence in one direction or another, as their beliefs and convictions directed. With one of these moulders of the Union, the life of William Day Taylor led him close into association. This was Chief Justice Marshall, whose genius was responsible to so large an extent in giving the Supreme Court of the United States its unique position among the courts of the world. Mr. Taylor married a niece of the great chief justice. Eli/a Adams Marshall, a daughter of William Marshall. Mr. Taylor was in politics affiliated with the Whig party, and thus in sympathy with his distinguished connections. He lived on the ancestral estate, and following the habits of his forbears occupied himself as a planter, cultivating the splendid estate that was his inheritance. In religion he was an Episcopalian, and in this profession of faith he was also following the traditions of his family. He and his wife were the parents of several children, some of them as follows: James Marshall, John Randolph and George Keith.

(VI) James Marshall Taylor, oldest son of William Day and Eliza Adams (Marshall) Taylor, was born in Hanover county, Virginia. April 27, 1822. Like his father before him. and indeed all his forbears, he cultivated the family estate, or rather that portion of it which fell to his share, but he did not pass his life upon his farm as largely as had his ancestors. At the breaking out of the civil war in 1861, Mr. Taylor enlisted in the Confederate army, and had charge of the ambulance train between Fredericksburg and Richmond. He was, as his father had been before him, a staunch member of the Whig party, and became by appointment clerk to the treasurer of the state of Virginia. He was a member of the Episcopal church. James Marshall Taylor married Isabel de Leon Jacobs, a native of Richmond. Virginia. where she was born in March, 1822. Mrs. Taylor was a daughter of Solomon B. and Hetty (Nones) Jacobs, of Richmond, her maternal grandfather being Major Benjamin Nones, of revolutionary war renown. Their wedding was celebrated