Graham Taylor was an American clergyman, settlement house founder, and civic reformer.
Background
He was born in Schenectady, N. Y. , in 1851, the second of two sons of the Rev. William James Romeyn Taylor by his first wife, Katharine Rappelye (Cowenhoven) Taylor. His mother died when he was a year old, and his father subsequently married her sister, Maria Louise Cowenhoven, by whom he had two more sons. The Cowenhovens were of Dutch descent; the Taylors had emigrated from England in the late eighteenth century. Four generations of Taylors had preceded Graham and his half-brothers, William Rivers and Livingston Ludlow, in the Dutch Reformed ministry.
Education
After graduation from Rutgers College in 1870, Taylor entered the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church in America at New Brunswick, N. J. He was ordained in 1873.
Career
Taylor served the Dutch Reformed church in Hopewell, Dutchess County, N. Y. , from 1873 until 1880. By 1880 he was ready to accept a call from the Fourth Congregational Church in Hartford, Connecticut His twelve years in Hartford added an urban dimension to his "community or civic consciousness. " He responded to the liberal atmosphere of Congregationalism by revitalizing the church's membership, paying its debt, and building a new wing to accommodate evangelistic work with wayward men. Although the older Congregational ministers criticized his soul-saving activities in the waterfront district, Taylor persevered and eventually won both moral and financial support.
His appointment as professor of practical theology at Hartford Theological Seminary in 1888 enabled him to train students in city missionary techniques. Taylor's widening reputation convinced the Chicago Theological Seminary that he was the man to head their new department of Christian sociology, the first in any religious institution in the United States. He was reluctant to leave the East, but in 1892 he finally agreed to accept "the call of the West to pioneer on its social frontier. "
Taylor's connection with Chicago Theological Seminary was long and fruitful. He was a stimulating teacher, using his own experience to illustrate the principles of Christian sociology and encouraging students to study first-hand the role of the church in the city's crowded industrial areas.
During 1911 and 1912 he wrote for the Survey a series of articles on social Christianity, later publishing these in his first book, Religion in Social Action (1913). Although he declined the presidency of the seminary in 1906, he was acting president for two years and continued to lecture there until 1924. This long association with Chicago Theological Seminary provided his main source of income and gave authority to his civic reform activities, while at the same time his national prestige aided the seminary. Taylor's settlement interest stemmed from his social-gospel theology. Eager to adapt Christianity to urban problems and to familiarize his students with industrial conditions, he saw in the settlement house a way to achieve both goals.
Having read about Toynbee Hall in London and Neighborhood Guild in New York, and having observed the program of Jane Addams at Hull House, Taylor combed Chicago's west side for a suitable location in which to launch his own settlement work. In 1894 he and his family and four of his students moved into an old, dilapidated house in the 17th ward. This was the beginning of Chicago Commons. The newcomers gradually formed small clubs and classes, organized a kindergarten and day nursery, and sponsored a weekly forum. The steady increase in the number of residents and the variety of their activities soon made it imperative for the settlement to seek larger quarters.
The new Chicago Commons, designed by the architects Allen B. and Irving K. Pond, was a model of settlement-house design, a five-story, L-shaped brick building occupied in 1901. The staff constantly adjusted its program to the changing neighborhood, working with Germans, Scandinavians, and Irish in the 1890's, then with Italians, and later with Poles, Hungarians, Greeks, Russians, Armenians, and Turks. Particularly successful was Taylor's nonpartisan reform movement, which greatly improved 17th ward politics.
When Chicago Commons celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1919 it had a nationwide reputation, and its founder had been honored with the presidency of the National Conference of Charities and Correction (1914) and the National Federation of Settlements (1918). In 1921 Taylor handed the reins to his daughter Lea, but he continued to help formulate policy and raise funds, and in 1936 he published the story of the settlement, Chicago Commons Through Forty Years. The difficulty of holding experienced residents convinced Taylor of the urgent need for trained social workers.
During his first trip to Europe, in 1903, he had studied the training methods of the English settlements and determined to inaugurate a similar program in Chicago. That fall, with the backing of President William Rainey Harper and the extension division of the University of Chicago, Taylor and Charles Richmond Henderson offered the first course for social workers in Chicago. During 1904-05 a full-time program was available, just one year after the New York School of Philanthropy had sponsored the first such course in this country.
In 1908 Taylor's training school was incorporated as the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, and its research department was endowed by the Russell Sage Foundation; its faculty included Jane Addams, Julia C. Lathrop, Mary McDowell, Edith Abbott, Sophonisba Breckinridge, and Alexander Johnson. Taylor was president of the school and a staff lecturer from 1908 until 1920, when his institution was absorbed by the University of Chicago and became its Graduate School of Social Service Administration. In addition to his settlement activity and teaching, Taylor found time to work closely with the Chicago Civic Federation and the Municipal Voters' League, to mediate labor disputes, to serve on many city and state commissions, and to publicize his ideas about religion, education, labor, politics, and social reform.
With John Palmer Gavit in 1896 he started a small monthly magazine, The Commons, which grew from a Chicago Commons news sheet into the unofficial journal of the settlement house movement. In 1905 it merged with Charities and four years later was reorganized as the Survey, to which Taylor and his son, Graham Romeyn, contributed articles, reviews, and editorial advice. For the Chicago Daily News Taylor wrote a weekly column from 1902 until his death. His pleas for social, economic, and political reform, written in a warm, friendly style and invariably optimistic in tone, prompted its editor, Victor F. Lawson, to refer to him as "the conscience of Chicago. "
His life, he admitted, had "swung like a pendulum, almost every twenty-four hours, between the privileged few and the struggling many; between the crowded tenements and offices of captains of commerce; between trade unions and manufacturers' associations; and in politics and religion, between conservatives and progressives, reactionaries and radicals. "
Taylor completed an autobiographical volume, aptly entitled Pioneering on Social Frontiers (1930), but in the last years of his life the infirmities of old age kept him confined to his home in Ravinia, Ill. , where he died at the age of eighty-seven. He was buried in New Brunswick, N. J.
Achievements
He is remembered as the founder of Chicago Commons Settlement House.
(Chicago 1930 first edition University of Chicago. Hardcov...)
Religion
His efforts "to make religion real" for his rural parishioners led him to reject a large part of the conservative framework riveted, as he said, upon his faith by his theological training.
Politics
Taylor never identified himself publicly with any political party, for he felt that partisanship would hamper his reform activities and decrease the effectiveness of his Daily News "civic pulpit. "
Personality
Tall and slender in build, Taylor was endowed with a lively sense of humor and an amazing fund of energy.
Connections
On September 18, 1873 of that year he married Leah Demarest, daughter of Prof. David D. Demarest of the Seminary. From this union there were four children.
His wife, Leah Demarest Taylor, died in 1918. A second marriage, to Mrs. Isabella (Bishop) McClintock on November 21, 1921, ended with her sudden death in 1926.
