Preston County, West Virginia Biography of MILTON HAROLD TAYLOR This biography was submitted by Valerie Crook, E-mail address: ********************************************** ***The submitter does not have a connection*** ********to the subject of this sketch.******** ********************************************** This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. All other rights reserved. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the WVGenWeb Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/wvfiles.htm The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume II, pg. 611-612 Preston MILTON HAROLD TAYLOR, whose farm is in the Masontown community of Preston County, was a fanner before he really learned farming as a vocation and business, and his work in recent years has demonstrated the value of knowl- edge as a supplement to brawn in handling the complicated technique of agriculture and stock husbandry. Mr. Taylor represents an old and prominent family of Preston County. His father, George Washington Taylor, was born October 24, 1828, in Monongalia County, and in 1848 married Eliza Jane Emerson, daughter of John Emer- son. She was born about eight miles north of Morgantown, January 25, 1825. Milton Harold Taylor was the youngest of the nine child- ren of his parents and was born October 7, 1869, at the old Taylor homestead four miles east of Masontown. He learned the work of the fields co-incident with his lessons in reading, writing and arithmetic in the rural schools. He became an old school farmer, but some years after his mar- riage and after he was the father of several children he decided to know more about farming, particularly the scien- tific reasons that underlie agriculture. He entered the State University Agricultural School, taking the special work provided for men who had not completed the regular pre- paratory training leading up to university. He studied three winter terms, receiving a diploma as a graduate, but all the time he carried on the work of his home farm, direct- ing it over the telephone and in accordance with the new ideas he was getting from day to day and week to week. Mr. Taylor was a classmate and roommate as well in university with Hon. W. D. Zinn, the widely known writer on agricultural topics whose theory and practice of farming have opened the eyes of many to the best methods of get ting results on a West Virginia farm. For a time after his graduation Mr. Taylor was in the service of the State Board of Agriculture lecturing and speaking before fanners insti- tutes, and carrying his own knowledge by extension from the laboratories of the university to men whose duties kept them close to the farm. Mr. Taylor among various agricultural methods exercises a selection of seed, doing this while the ear of corn is still on the stalk or saving the small grain for seed where it has matured the best. His methods of planting and tilling arc such as harmonize with the suggestions from the Agri- cultural Department of the State, and the results far out- weigh the haphazard and arbitrary methods in vogue in his childhood and, for that matter, among many of the men on the farm calling themselves farmers today. Mr. Taylor found it a matter of profit as well as satisfaction to elimi- nate the scrub animal and introduce registered stock. He is a short horn-Durham cattle breeder, and has a stock of blue-blooded Barred Rock poultry. He has also tried the Bronze turkey, the Roscomb Brown Leghorn and the Pekin duck with satisfactory results. Mr. Taylor's present farm is adjacent to Masontown on the south. At the time of his marriage thirty years ago, he located on a farm two miles southwest of Masontown, bought another place two years later, and in 1901 moved to a farm just north of Masontown, coming to his present place in April, 1903. His farm includes some of the first land cultivated in this part of the state, it having been settled about the time of the Revolution. The improvements are of Mr. Taylor's own planning and construction, and include a house and barn and the first silo erected in Preston County west of Cheat River. He believes in modern ma- chinery, and uses a tractor for power to operate his corn binder, grain binder, harrow, plow and soil packer, tools that are essential to a farmer who believes in getting the work done without loss of time or motion. Mr. Taylor is also a road representative in Preston County for the Inter- national Harvester Company, selling motor trucks and threshers and tractors in addition to the varied line of farm machinery manufactured by that corporation. Mr. Taylor was reared in a republican family, casting his first vote for Benjamin Harrison in 1892. He has been a notary public, was elected a justice of the peace in 1908, and served two terms as county committeeman, but does not indulge in politics for the sake of office for himself. As a youth he was a member of the Evangelical Church, but is now a Presbyterian. He is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows at Masontown, of which he is a past grand, and is also a member of the Encampment. He has held all the chairs in the Lodge of Knights of Pythias, is a Mason and a member of the Junior Order United American Mechanics. However he has done most of his fraternal work in the Patrons of Husbandry, becoming affiliated with the Orange in 1898. He has held a number of offices in local and state Grange, acted as organizer of subordinate granges, and has assisted in influencing the program of state legisla- tion through the Grange. He was one of the organizers of the Grange Mutual Fire Insurance Company of West Vir- ginia, and served as its secretary. He was one of the organ- izers and a director of the Bank of Masontown, a director of the Masontown Telephone Company, and was vice presi- dent for West Virginia of the Farmers' National Congress. He has been actively associated with a number of the prominent leaders and educators in the West Virginia Farmers' Movement, and has been a member of the State Poultry Association, State Live Stock Association, State Horticultural Association, State Dairy Association and other similar organization. In Preston County, January 25, 1893, Mr. Taylor married Anna B. Martin, who was born at Clifton Mills, June 18, 1869, daughter of Simon R. and Sarah A. (Listen) Martin. Her father served as a Union soldier three years with the Third Maryland Regiment. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor have a family of childreen inspired with all the progressive ideas and community ideals of their parents. The oldest, Ferris A., graduated from the Old Dominion College near Win- chester, Virginia, taught for several terms, and was in the undertaking business in Morgantown when he enlisted in 1917, as sergeant mechanic in the One Hundred and Thir- teenth Ammunition Train, Motor Section, was sent over- seas, but the armistice was signed before he reached the front. The son Lynn A., who graduated from West Vir- ginia University in 1922, was in the navy during the war, tut did not get into action. James O., the third of the Taylor brothers, was a volunteer and a sergeant in the One Hundred and Thirteenth Ammunition Train. Ruth, who married Glenn Pyles, of Mount Morris, Pennsylvania, is a graduate of the Masontown High School and taught in the Valley District High School. Martin is attending the Masontown High School, while Dolly and Viola, the younger children, are pupils in the grades.