The Family of Nathaniel G. Taylor
From left to right: Alfred Alexander (future congressman and governor of Tennessee), Mary Eva, Nat, Emma with the baby Sanna, Robert Love (future congressman, governor, and U. S. senator), Hugh, Nathaniel G., David, James Patton (my great-grandfather, farmer, sometimes poet, writer), and Rhoda.
This extraordinary photograph is apparently a composite--must have been impossible to get this large and busy family together at one time. Nathaniel Greene Taylor represented Tennessee in the U. S. Congress before the Civil War and served as Indian Commissioner during the presidency of Andrew Johnson. Peter Taylor, the well-known writer, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and one of the finest short story writers of our time (or any time, for that matter), was a grandson of Governor Robert Love Taylor (Peter would have been my father's second cousin). Peter Taylor's novel In the Tennessee Country deals brilliantly with family material, as do many of his short stories. For another version of this family's history in fictional terms, see my book Fiddle and Bow, which also includes a host of old family photographs. For further information about Taylor genealogy, beginning with Isaac (called "the emigrant"), who left Ireland in the early 18th century and who was Nathaniel Greene Taylor's great-great grandfather and my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, click here and follow his son Andrew's line. The treaties negotiated by N. G. Taylor during his tenure as commissioner were highly significant ones. For a sample, see the
Medicine Lodge treaty with the Kiowa and Comanche tribes, 1868. His son Alf accompanied him on this journey to Kansas, serving as a secretary and, in his spare time, hunting buffalo.
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