JoDaviess County IL Archives Obituaries.....Taylor, John I. February 1, 1855
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Ken Wright kenneth565@aol.com April 25, 2009, 12:51 am

Maquoketa Sentinel, Feb. 1, 1855
Maquoketa Sentinel, February 1, 1855.

EXECUTION AT GALENA

On Friday at 2 o’clock P.M., John I. Taylor was hung at the county hospital,
near Galena, for the murder of his wife. At 1 P.M., in charge of an armed posse,
he was conducted to the place of execution, followed by a large crowd of all
classes and ages, maintaining a sad composure during the funeral march. He was
an old man of sixty years of age. We copy the execution from the Galena
Jeffersonian.

Upon reaching the ground ten thousand persons there stood in one solid mass.
Taylor ascended the scaffold perfectly self-possessed and with a firm and steady
tread-clothed in a white gown and cap he addressed with a firm voice the crowd
for more than thirty minutes. His dying declarations were in substance the same
as those uttered by him when sentence was passed upon him. He reiterated his
innocence of the crime of willful murder-declared that he knew not how his wife
was killed-expressed the hope that as Christ was crucified for all, he was
crucified for him, and the belief that he was forgiven by his God.

After the cap was drawn over his eyes, and he knew not what instant he would be
ushered into eternity, he again for ten minutes addressed the crowd in a firm
and distinct voice, and admonished them to beware of intoxication, the cause of
his misfortune and the curse of his life. Weighing some 180 lbs., and having
been given a fall of six feet upon the removal of the trap door, he died almost
without a struggle-his neck seeming to have been stretched near four inches.
Thus died John I. Taylor, who had rendered the state some service in the
Seminole War-performed in this city last summer, during the cholera season,
offered of kindness and humanity from which others shrank from as dangerous, but
who unfortunately was addicted to drunkenness, and slew his wife in a fit of
inebriation.


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