Marshall William Taylor was born on July 1, 1846 in Lexington, Kentucky, the youngest of three children. Both his parents were, or had been, slaves; ultimately both acquired freedom. Marshall, according to one authority, adopted the name of Taylor, that of his father being Samuel Boyd and that of his mother Nancy Ann. The former was of Scotch-Irish and Indian descent; the latter, of African and Arabian, her mother having been brought from Madagascar when a child.
Marshall's opportunities for education were few. He attended schools for free negro children in Lexington and at Louisville, to which place the family moved after his father's death.
He received an honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity from Central Tennessee College in Nashville in 1879.
At Louisville he became a messenger for a law firm. In 1866 he taught school in Breckenridge County, Ky. , and two years later presided at an educational convention held at Owensboro, Ky. At a quarterly conference of the Hardinsburg Circuit, Ky. , in 1869 he was licensed as a Methodist Episcopal preacher. He then did missionary work in Arkansas and other parts of the Southwest. In 1872 he was admitted on trial to the Lexington Conference, and that same year was sent to the General Conference as a lay delegate. For five consecutive years he was corresponding secretary of the Annual Conference to which he belonged.
He was ordained deacon in February 1874, and elder in March 1876. From 1872 to 1875, in addition to his pastoral work, he issued the Kentucky Methodist. He served first as pastor of the Litchfield Circuit and then of the Coke Chapel Circuit at Louisville. In 1875 he was placed in charge of Coke Chapel at Indianapolis, and two years later was sent to the Union Methodist Episcopal Church in Cincinnati. In 1878 he became presiding elder of the Ohio District. He was a fraternal delegate from his Church to a conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, in 1880, and the following year a delegate to the Ecumenical Conference in London. Made presiding elder of the Louisville District in 1883, he was the senior ministerial delegate to the General Conference of 1884. At this gathering he was chosen at a caucus of the negro delegates as their nominee for the bishopric of West Africa. His health was poor, however, and, fearing the effect of the African climate, he declined to be a candidate.
He was thereupon elected editor of the Southwestern Christian Advocate, published in New Orleans, which position he filled until the time of his death. The acceptance of this editorship proved to be an unfortunate move for Taylor. Desk work was unfavorable to his health and he disliked it. Furthermore, although in private intercourse and in his public addresses he spoke fluently, he could not express himself as easily and forcibly in print.
A zealous adherent of his Church, he upheld the action of the Methodist authorities in refusing to admit negroes to the Chattanooga denominational school established for white pupils. In his editorials he urged the colored people to work out their own destiny apart from the whites if necessary and not to strive for educational, social, and religious equality with them. The negro press took exception to his views, which differed widely from those held by many leaders of his race, so that in his later years he lost in popularity.
(Excerpt from A Collection of Revival Hymns and Plantation...)
His voice was sonorous and musical and his manners were ingratiating.
He married Kate Heston, by whom he had two children.
