Yolo County CA Archives Biographies.....Taylor, James 1857 - 
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com December 13, 2005, 11:31 pm

Author: Tom Gregory

JAMES TAYLOR

    Throughout the greater part of his life, extending back indeed to the period
of his earliest recollections, Mr. Taylor has been a resident of Yolo county. In
the schools of the county he received a fair education and from the fertile soil
which this region boasts he has been able not only to earn a livelihood, but at
the end of each year to have a neat surplus representing gratifying returns for
his expenditure of time, labor and means. With a high standing among the
acquaintances of a lifetime and with a neat property representing his
intelligent investments, he has already attained much of the ends for which
mankind strives and in his own community he has the warm regard of those who
have come to know and appreciate his sterling qualities of head and heart.

    Descended on the paternal side from English progenitors, James Taylor is a
son of John E. Taylor, an Englishman by birth and education, but a resident of
the United States from young manhood. During the first few years of his
residence in this country he was engaged in farming in Iowa. From that state he
came west across the plains with ox teams as far as Utah in the early '50s and
settled on a farm near Salt Lake, where his son, James, was born June 10, 1857.
Removal was made to California about 1860, when he bought a tract of one hundred
and sixty acres near Woodland and undertook the improvement of a farm. On that
place he remained until death, meanwhile placing the land under cultivation and
maintaining a warm interest in community activities. Twice married, he was
survived by his second wife, Elizabeth Pincock, also a native of England, who
died at the age of seventy-seven. Mr. Taylor organized the first brass band in
Woodland; this was the first band in Yolo county.

    From the age of three years James Taylor has lived in Yolo county. Primarily
educated in country schools, he later was sent to Hesperian College in Woodland.
Under the training of his father he received early in life considerable
knowledge concerning agriculture and when he left the old homestead he was
thoroughly qualified to take up general farming for himself. For about ten years
he occupied a tract of one hundred and sixty acres north of Yolo, where at first
he kept "bachelor's hall." To that place he brought his bride, a popular young
lady of Yolo county, whom he married November 19, 1891, and who was Miss Martha
E. Jacobs, the daughter of Isaac W. Jacobs, one of the pioneer attorneys of Yolo
county, who is represented on another page in this volume. Mrs. Taylor was born
on the old Jacobs' homestead near Yolo, and her entire life has been passed in
this county, her education being received in its schools.

    Upon disposing of the farm where first he made his home after marriage Mr.
Taylor came to the farm which he now owns and occupies, the same comprising one
hundred and twenty well-improved acres situated near Yolo. Since he came to this
property in 1895 he has erected a comfortable farm home, has fenced the entire
tract with a substantial system of durable fencing and has built a barn for the
shelter of his stock, besides making other needed improvements. Cattle, horses
and hogs of good grades are to be found on the farm and their sale from year to
year adds a neat sum to the income of the owner, who is accounted one of the
prosperous stockmen as well as grain and alfalfa farmers in the district. In his
family there are three sons and one daughter, namely: James Elmer, Clay William,
Elmira E., and Wayland Francis. In national elections he always has given his
vote to Republican nominees, but locally he supports the men he considers best
qualified to serve the interests of the community, regardless of their party
beliefs. Through fraternal association with the Woodmen of the World he enjoys
the insurance advantages offered by that order and also participates in its
social activities. Mr. Taylor can look back over fifty years of improvements in
Yolo county and remember when most of the land out of Woodland was a stock
range, and he has seen it opened up until it is all farmed, thus passing from a
stock range to a grain field, and from the latter to orchards and alfalfa
fields. A part of this transformation he has taken a hand in, thus contributing
no small part to the development of Yolo county.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from

HISTORY OF YOLO COUNTY CALIFORNIA
WITH
Biographical Sketches
OF
The Leading Men and Women of the County Who Have Been Identified With Its Growth
and Development From the Early Days to the Present

HISTORY BY
TOM GREGORY
AND OTHER WELL KNOWN WRITERS
ILLUSTRATED COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME

HISTORIC RECORD COMPANY
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA [1913]




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