George Taylor, Pennsylvania

1716-1781

Representing Pennsylvania at the Continental Congress

Little is known about George Taylor. He was a working man and little concerned with politics, though he acted in service to his nation when called. He was born in Northern Ireland and emigrated to America in his early twenties. He was an Ironmaster at the Warwick Furnace and Coventry Forge. Later he and a partner leased an iron furnace in Bucks County. Iron production was his principal concern all of his life.

Taylor was elected to the provincial assembly for Pennsylvania in 1764, and was reelected for five consecutive years. He was a member of the committee to draft the instructions of Pennsylvania delegates to the first Continental Congress, a member of the Committee of Correspondence, and of the Committee of Safety. In 1775 he was appointed to replace a member of the Pennsylvania delegation who refused to support Independence. He arrived too late to vote, but did sign the Declaration. He served Congress through 1777. He was then elected to the new Supreme Council of his state, but served for only six weeks, apparently due to illness. There is no record of any public service afterward. He died in 1781 at the age of 65.

From: US History.org

---

Surmounting the poverty that forced him to come to the American Colonies from Ireland as an indentured servant to an ironmaster, George Taylor climbed to the top of the industry. In the process, merging politics with commerce, he gained enough distinction in county and State affairs to win election to the Continental Congress—his only service on the national level. Even then, he attended only a few months, just long enough to sign the Declaration. He contributed more directly to the cause of liberty as an ironmaster, producing ordnance for the Continental Army.

When Taylor was about 20 years of age, he indentured himself and emigrated from northern Ireland, where he had been born in 1716, to Pennsylvania. He began as a laborer and then became a clerk at Warwick Furnace, in Chester County, and within 3 years rose to bookkeeper-manager of nearby Coventry Forge, another enterprise of his employer. In 1742, the year after the latter died, Taylor acquired his business when he married his widow; she bore him a son and daughter.

In the mid-1750's Taylor moved northeastward to Bucks County, where he and a partner leased Durham Furnace, about 2 miles south of the Northampton County line and 10 miles south of Easton. Apparently after 1763 Taylor lived much of the time at or near Easton and acquired property there. In 1768 his wife died; he subsequently sired five children by his housekeeper out of wedlock. The year of his wife's death, he built a home about 15 miles west of the city on a 331-acre tract he had purchased the year before. In 1771 he leased most of the land out as a farm, and 5 years later sold the house and land.

Taylor had begun his public life in 1747, when he took a commission as a captain in the Chester County militia. In 1761 he was appointed as justice of the peace for Bucks County, but devoted most of his energies to Northampton County, which he served as justice of the peace (1764-75) and representative in the colonial legislature (1764-70). In 1774 Taylor, a political moderate, became a member of the Northampton County committee of correspondence. The next year, he attended a provincial Revolutionary convention, was elected to the provincial assembly, served on the council of safety, and became a colonel in the Bucks and Northampton County militias.

In July 1776 the Pennsylvania assembly selected Taylor as one of its new Delegates to the Continental Congress. His only noteworthy action there was signing the Declaration. The next January, however, he and fellow signer George Walton of Georgia negotiated a peace treaty with the Six Indian Nations (Iroquois) at Easton, Pa., but Congress did not ratify it. In March the voters of Northampton County elected Taylor to the new Supreme Executive Assembly of Pennsylvania, but illness and financial difficulties restricted his participation to only 6 weeks, at the end of which he retired from public life.

By this time, Taylor's Durham Furnace was turning out grapeshot, cannonballs, bar shot, and cannon for the Revolutionary army—for which Taylor was ill-compensated. In 1778 the State dispossessed him of his lease on the Durham Furnace, owned by the Philadelphia Loyalist John Galloway and confiscated by the State. Taylor then moved to Greenwich Township, N.J., and leased Greenwich Forge, which he operated until his death at the age of 65 in 1781. The year before, his health failing, Taylor had returned to Easton and leased a home. Originally buried in the yard of the German Evangelical Lutheran Church at Easton, his body was later moved to the Easton Cemetery.

From: National Park Service