The First Robert Love Taylor
Born 1850, Happy Valley, Tennessee. Died 1912, Washington, DC
He was my grandfather's uncle. A son of Nathaniel G. Taylor, minister and Indian Commissioner under Andrew Johnson, and Emmaline Haynes Taylor, who was a sister of the confederate senator Landon Carter Haynes, "Our Bob" served three terms as governor of Tennessee, having won his first term by defeating his brother Alf in the famous Tennessee War of the Roses campaign of 1886. He died while in office as US senator. Bob and Alf were as well known for their fiddle playing as for their political achievements, one suspects (and this descendant, another fiddling Robert Love Taylor, admires them for it). Both men were also popular on the lecture circuit when not in political office. Their oldest brother was James Patton Taylor, my great grandfather, who for a while tinkered with a design for a machine gun, was beat out of a patent on it by a fellow named Gatling, and spent most of his life at his farm on the banks of the Nolichucky River in Tennessee.
SOME INTERESTING LINKS
[The Official Congressional Biography of Our Bob]
[The Official Congressional Biography of Our Alf]
[The Official Congressional Biography of Nathaniel G. Taylor]
[The Nathaniel G. Taylor family, c. 1862]
[A Florid Obituary Notice]
[A Novel about the Taylors]
[Baxter and Love]
[Table of Contents]
