He was born at Newport, Rhode Island, in 1780. He was the son of James and Mary (Vigneron) Taylor, and a descendant of Dr. Norbent F. Vigneron who came to Newport from Artois, France, in 1690. Both his parents belonged to the Society of Friends.
From the local schools and from reading in the library of his uncle, William Vigneron, a successful seaman and merchant, he attained a good foundation of learning.
At about eighteen he went to sea, and soon rose to mate and captain in the merchant service. In the War of 1812 he was among the numerous seamen who joined the navy at Newport under Lieut. O. H. Perry, his warrant as sailing-master being dated April 28, 1813. His actual entry, however, was considerably earlier, for on February 21, 1813, he left Newport for Sackett's Harbor, Lake Ontario, in charge of a detachment of fifty sailors.
On March 30 he joined Perry on Lake Erie, where, with Lieut. Daniel Turner, he had special supervision of the rigging, equipping, and arming of Perry's squadron. According to his fellow officer, Usher Parsons, he was "more experienced than any one on the station in the duties of seamanship. " In the battle of Lake Erie, September 10, 1813, he was sailing master of the flagship Lawrence. Though wounded in the thigh, he kept the deck, and remained in the battered Lawrence--which had twenty-two killed and sixty-one wounded of her complement of 103--when Perry shifted his flag to the Niagara. The log of the Lawrence, largely written by Taylor, is preserved by the Newport Historical Society. With other officers in the action he received the thanks of Congress and a sword, and on December 9, 1814, he was promoted to lieutenant. After the battle he returned to Erie, September 23, in the Lawrence, which had been made hospital ship of the squadron and was then sent to Lake Ontario with dispatches. Shortly afterward he returned to Newport. In the protracted controversy between Perry and his second-in-command, Jesse D. Elliott over the conduct of the Lake Erie action, Taylor was naturally a strong partisan of Perry, his affidavit before the Rhode Island legislature in June 1818 being characterized by Elliott's biographer as "a prolix narrative from a warm friend of one party and a decided enemy of the other". At the close of 1814 he was engaged in fitting out the Java under Perry at Baltimore, and he sailed in her to the Mediterranean in 1815.
From 1816 to 1823, partly because of recurrent trouble from his wound, he was on leave or nominal duty at Newport. During the ensuing quiet naval period up to the Mexican War his sea service included a Mediterranean cruise in the Ontario, 1824-26; service on the Brazil station, 1829-30; and in the late thirties, command of the sloops Erie and Warren in the Gulf. He was made captain September 8, 1841, and late in 1847 took the ship-of-the-line Ohio around Cape Horn for operations on the Mexican west coast, where he remained until the latter part of 1848, after the close of the Mexican War. Owing to age and declining health, this was his last sea service. He was placed on the reserved list September 13, 1855. His funeral was in Trinity Church, Newport, which he had joined a few years before his death, and his burial was in the Island Cemetery.
He was married December 31, 1810, to Abby, daughter of Capt. Thomas White of Newport, and had seven children, three of whom died young; a son, William Rogers Taylor, became a naval officer; another, Oliver Hazard Perry Taylor, rose to a brevet captaincy in the army and was killed May 17, 1858, in Indian warfare in Washington Territory.
