Background
He was born probably in northern Ireland in 1716 of a good family.
He was born probably in northern Ireland in 1716 of a good family.
When he arrived in Pennsylvania, about 1736, he became a clerk in the Warwick Furnace and Coventry Forge in Chester County, and later manager.
About 1754 he moved to Durham, in Bucks County, where he and a partner had leased a furnace, and during the remainder of his life his business interests lay largely there.
After 1763 he lived much of the time at Easton, in Northampton County, which became the scene of his political activities. In October 1764, he was elected to the provincial assembly, and was returned annually for the next five years. He was a member of the minority proprietary party and bitterly opposed a royal government and its chief advocate, Franklin. Unlike John Dickinson, Taylor's opposition arose from his western radicalism. His attitude toward imperial affairs at this time was evinced by his membership on the committeee that drew up instructions for delegates to the Stamp Act congress.
After a politically inactive or unsuccessful interval of four years, he reappeared as chairman of a meeting of the principal inhabitants of the county protesting against closing the Boston harbor and favoring an intercolonial congress; six men, including Taylor, were named a Committee of Correspondence. He did not attend the conference of deputies in Philadelphia in July, but his absence was probably not due to lack of sympathy, for he went to the similar convention in January 1775. The following July he was elected to a colonelcy in the Bucks County militia and although he never saw active service he retained the title.
Sent again to the assembly by Northampton in October 1775, he served with distinction on many important committees and helped draft instructions for delegates to Congress in November. Although a member of the second Committee of Safety from October 1775 to July 1776, he rarely attended. His membership in the too conservative assembly doubtless explains his absence from the radical conference of committees of June 1776, and from the usurping convention which grew out of it. His views, however, are indicated by his appointment by the latter body as delegate to the Continental Congress on July 20, in the place of one of several Pennsylvanians who had refused to approve the Declaration of Independence. He signed the engrossed copy of that document on August 2, or thereafter, but took no other part in the activities of Congress, except to represent it, with George Walton, at a conference with Indians at Easton in January 1777. He evidently quit Congress soon afterward.
In March he was elected from Northampton to the new Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, but because of illness he served only six weeks and then retired from active public affairs.
He had been a moderate radical, whose attitude was largely provincial, and whose interest in politics was never absorbing.
He was married in 1742 to Mrs. Anne Taylor Savage, who died in 1768. Taylor had two legitimate children, and five natural children by his housekeeper, Naomi Smith. Of the former, the daughter died in childhood and the son predeceased his father, leaving a large family.
