Timothy White - James Taylor: Long Ago and Far Away

HERCULES TAILYEOUR

Prominent shipbuilder in port of Montrose on Scotlands Angus coast, and the son of John Tailyeour, treasurer in 1601 of the Montrose town council. Hercules was laird since 1616 of the family lands of Borrowfield, and in 1631 became Master of Montroses piers. Hercules had two brothers: John, Jr, local magistrate in the late 1650s, and Robert, elected town provost in 1661 and member of the Scottish Parliament until 1678.

ROBERT TAILYEOUR

Son of Hercules, a Montrose provost, and Master of the Hospital in Montrose. He wed Jean Ouchterlony in 1711. She bore him three children (Catherine, 1712), James (1714), and Robert, Jr (1715), who grew up on the familys Borrowfield lands.

ROBERT TAILYOUR, JR

Co-provost of Montrose with brother James, moved away from Borrowfield and purchased the great estates at Kirktonhill and Balmanno. He wed Jean Carnegie, daughter of Pittarrow burgess Sir James Carnegie, in 1750, and they had three children: Mary, James, and John the last a prominent trader like his father. John was once shipwrecked in Jamaica. Kirktonhill was sold after Robert, Jrs death in 1778.

JAMES TAILYOUR

Robert, Jrs brother and co-provost. He married Christian Card in the Marykirk church at the entrance to Kirktonhill in 1751. A thriving merchant-artisan known for his fine damask-weaving and thread-making firms, James and family resided at Drumnagair Farm and then the Mill of Barns estate adjoining Kirktonhill.

JOHN TAILYOUR

Son of Robert, Jr, a Montrose councilman and merchant active in Caribbean trade. He wed Mary McCall and prospered with shipping associates in Glasgow, London, Bristol, Liverpool and Lancaster. In the 1790s, John regained Kirktonhill and Balmanno.

ISAAC TAYLOR

The sixth of James and Christian Taylors nine children. Born in 1763 and christened in the Marykirk church, he left Montrose in 1790 at the age of 27, sailing across the Atlantic with his brother John, 24, to New Bern, North Carolina. Isaac became a famed merchant in the American South, and also owned a plantation outside of town called Glenburnie. He and his wife Hannah had six daughters and one son, Alexander. Isaac died on July 4, 1846.

ALEXANDER TAYLOR

Isaacs only son, left out of Isaacs will because his drinking habits were adjudged to be excessive. He became a successful physician and married Sarah Ann Cole, who bore them two boys, James Cole and Isaac Montrose Taylor I.

MRS ALEXANDER TAYLOR

A spy for the Confederacy during the American Civil War; also known as the Prison Mother for her work nursing injured/imprisoned rebel soldiers. She and her husband were friends of North Carolina Governor Zebulon Vance, a former Confederate colonel who served as a character witness in the murder trial of ex-soldier Tom Dula whose 1868 hanging inspired the North Carolina folk song, Tom Dooley.

ISAAC MONTROSE TAYLOR I

Born in New Bern, NC, in 1857. Attended the University of North Carolina, graduating in 1879, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York. He practised at the Western North Carolina State Hospital in Morganton, NC, and founded Broadoaks Sanatorium in Morganton. Wed Susan Murphy Evans, daughter of a noted NC doctor of Scottish descent, and they had seven children, including son Alexander.

ALEXANDER TAYLOR II

He married Theodosia Haynes of Long Meadow, Mass., his wife dying after complications during childbirth. The attending physician was her father-in-law Isaac Montrose I. Neither Dr Taylor nor his bereaved son ever recovered from the tragedy, so Theodosia and Alexanders child, Isaac Montrose Taylor II, was raised by Alexanders sister, Sarah Cole Taylor, and her husband, Dr James Vernon.

ISAAC MONTROSE TAYLOR II

Orphaned son of Theodosia and Alexander Taylor II, was a graduate of Harvard Medical School, lieutenant commander in the US Navy, chief resident at Massachusetts General Hospital and Dean of the Medical School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1946 he wed Gertrude Trudy Woodard of Newburyport, Mass. The daughter of a successful commercial fisherman, Trudy studied at Bostons Conservatory of Music, and her lineage included numerous New England seamen as well as writer John Greenleaf Whittier. Ike and Trudy had five children, Alex, James, Kate, Livingston and Hugh.

JAMES TAYLOR

Prominent musician, singer, composer, married singer-songwriter Carly Simon in 1972. They had two children, Ben and Sarah Sally Maria Taylor; divorced 1983. James remarried in 1985 to actress Kathryn Walker; divorced 1996. James wed Caroline Kim Smedvig in 2001; they have two children, Henry and Logan.

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Lo And Behold

A reading from the Book of Revelation: The New Jerusalem, announced the tall, rangy man at the foot of the altar, peering down at the open book of Scripture through wire-rimmed glasses as he loomed over the bowed heads of the aggrieved congregation.

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, James Taylor recited, the gentle nasal sonority of his sombre tone somehow lending him added authority, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband

Several hundred people were assembled in the Church of the New Covenant on the corner of Newbury and Berkeley Streets in Bostons Back Bay on the sunny morning of November 30, 1996 for a memorial service for Taylors father, Dr Isaac Ike Montrose Taylor II, graduate of Harvard Medical School, ex-lieutenant commander in the United States Navy, former chief resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, one-time Dean of the Medical School of the University of North Carolina, and a past executive administrator at the Boston University Medical Center, who died November 3 at the age of 75.

The mood of the occasion was sedate, respectful, astringent in its emotional tenor. The proceedings had opened with the strains of J.S. Bachs Arioso, as played by a cellist and pianist from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Another short musical interlude, My Fathers Eyes, sung by son Livingston Taylor, was framed by concise impressions offered from family friends and lifelong New England colleagues. James reading was followed by the playing of Rachmaninoffs bitter-sweet Vocalise.

I chose to read the New Jerusalem passage at my fathers memorial, James Taylor confided afterwards, because it had a lot of layers of meaning for him. The biblical aspect of a new beginning is there, and settlers coming to this country were looking for the same sort of new start, but also my dad had a sailboat that he dearly loved, and he named it