Ohio History Journal

322        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.   and the other the officers of the American fleet of Commodore Perry and the British fleet of Captain Barclay. The day's outing was delightfully closed by a steam-yacht trip from Port Clinton to Put-in-Bay, where a short stop was made and a glimpse taken of the proposed site of the monument to be erected in September, 1912, commemorative of Perry's encounter on Lake Erie.     EDWARD LIVINGSTON TAYLOR. An innumerable host of admiring acquaintances heard with regret; and a wide circle of intimate friends learned with sincere sorrow of the sudden death of Edward Livingston Taylor, who unexpectedly passed to the great beyond on the evening of Sunday, May 29th (1910.) His was no ordinary character; his abilities were of an unusual order; his qualities of sociability and friendship bound him in the closest

ties to those who enjoyed the priviledge of his companionship. Mr. Taylor descended from a li ne a g e distinguished for pioneer achievement, for sur- passing energy, unyielding in- tegrity and unswerving devotion to truth and country. He was the son of David Taylor and Margaret Livingston, respective- ly, of English and Scotch origin, whose families through widely different channels of experience came together in Franklin county, Ohio, more than a hundred years ago. David Taylor, father of our subject, was born in Nova Scotia, in 1801, and with his father (Robert), and brothers and sisters moved to Chillicothe, Ohio, then the capital of the new state, in 1806. Two years later the family moved to Truro township, Franklin county, and

the frame house then constructed for their home, still stands, one of the oldest landmarks of early settlement in the state, and it is still in the possession and occupancy of the Taylor family. This Truro township is historic, for it lies in the "Refugee Tract," a strip of land four and one-half miles wide from north to south and about fifty miles from east to west, extending from the east bank of the Scioto River to near the

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Muskingum River, and comprising 136,000 acres. This "refugee" strip

was so called because set aside by Congress of the United States in

1801 to remunerate those residents of Canada who at the time of the

American Revolution espoused the colonial cause and who sacrificing all

property and interests at home, crossed the border and joined the Amer-

ican army. One of the most conspicuous of these refugees was Colonel

James Livingston, who with two brothers fled Canada and cast his lot

with the loyalists of New York. James Livingston was made colonel

of a regiment, serving at first under General Schuyler and later under

General Montgomery. Colonel Livingston did valiant service the entire

seven years of the Revolution, in recognition of which the United

States government assigned him 1,200 acres of the aforesaid refugee

land, on which a portion of the city of Columbus now stands. The

patents for this land were turned over by the father (James) to his

son, Edward C. Livingston, who soon thereafter (1804) took possession

thereof and settled thereon. The daughter of this Edward Livingston,

-   and his wife Martha Nelson,-was Margaret Livingston, who

married David Taylor, May 16, 1836. Of this union-strong in blood,

brawn and brain-was born, March 20, 1839, Edward Livingston

Taylor.  He was educated in the district schools and at Hanover

College, Indiana, and Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, from which

latter he graduated in 1860. He at once began the study of law at

Columbus, in the office of Chauncey N. Olds, then one of the fore-

most leaders of the Franklin county bar. But the Civil War appealed to

the patriotism of the law student and during June and July, 1861, Ed-

ward served as a private in a volunteer company. He then returned to

his law books until July, 1862, when he again responded to his country's

call and was commissioned captain of Company D in the Ninety-fifth

Ohio Volunteers. He was wounded and taken prisoner at the battle

of Richmond, Ky., August 30, 1862. In a short time he was paroled and

exchanged and resuming his place at the front served thereafter in the

Army of the Tennessee, until the close of the siege of Vicksburg, July

4, 1863. The failure of his health compelled his retirement from the

army. His law studies were completed and being admitted to the bar

in November, 1862, he began the practice of his profession in which for

forty years he was most successful-an untiring student, a clear and

vigorous thinker, a ready and strong speaker, a fearless combatant, ever

observant of the rules and the courtesies of his profession, in short, an

honorable, upright, gentlemanly, but persistent and aggressive practitioner.

He singularly combined in his manner and method the urbanity and

dignity of the old school with the technical knowledge and uncompro-

mising tenacity and keen alertness of the modern advocate. In his at-

tainments and his tastes he was a striking example of the well rounded

man.  He intensely enjoyed the out-door life, its invigorating and in-

spiring freedom. He knew the fields and the forests and delighted in

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324       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

every form of nature. But he also knew books, he had the literary

instinct and the library was his dukedom. Especially was he given to

history, that of his own nation, state and locality. His own family rec-

ords, of which he was justly proud, stimulated him to a wider range of

research, until he was recognized as an authority on "the brave days of

old" when the Ohio forests echoed to the stroke of the pioneer's axe

and the war-whoop of the Indian occupant. The red man appealed to

his human sympathy and his historic predilections. He read profusely

the annals of the aborigine, and wrote many monographs thereon. Of

Mr. Taylor's knowledge, scholarship and graceful facility with the pen,

the volumes of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society

amply testify. He was painstaking in his statements, critically judicious

in the presentation of his subject-matter, terse and vigorous in style and

always entertaining. Only a few months before his decease he gathered

many of his essays, historic, reminiscent and otherwise, and published

them in a volume of some three hundred and fifty pages, entitled, "Ohio

Indians." It was at Mr. Taylor's suggestion that the monument was

erected to the memory of Leatherlips, a Wyandot chief, executed June

1, 1810, by members of his own tribe, at the supposed instigation of

Tenskwantawaw, the Prophet, brother of Tecumseh, who then had his

headquarters at Tippecanoe.  Leatherlips was charged with being in

alliance with the whites in the race war then raging. This monument,

one of the first ever erected to an Indian, and the only one in Ohio,

was dedicated September 18, 1887. The monument is a Scotch granite

monolith, sarcophagus in design; imposing and properly inscribed, it

rests on an elevation on the east bank of the Scioto River, not far from

the present town of Dublin. Mr. Taylor was deeply versed in the Indian

history and lore of Ohio, he seemed to know history at first hand, and

would delight to descant upon the deeds of Pontiac, Tecumseh, Corn-

stalk, Little Turtle, Blue Jacket, Black Hawk and the.many other chiefs

that made the early annals of the western red men so romantic. Mr.

Taylor had an exalted and ideal regard for women, ribaldry had no

place in his presence; he ever spoke in sanctified terms of his wife,

Katherine Noble Myers, whom he married in 1864 and who died thirty

years later. Few men so enthusiastically enjoyed the comradeship of

congenial friends. Extremely democratic in temperament and in man-

ner, he was intellectually artistocratic and in the choice of his friends

and associates gave cold welcome to those who had little else to offer

than pretense, shallowness and ignorance. A fascinating conversational-

ist, he possessed that rare concomitant, the patience of a good listener.

He had gleaned in all the fields of the richest literature, and the harvest

was at his ready command. Fortunate indeed were those who were

privileged to gather at his entertainments and one departed hence with

the feeling, not that he had been at "the frivolous work of polished

idleness," but rather had been the guest of one upon whom nature had

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Editorialana.                        325   lavished her rarest gifts of talent and temperament to which had been added the strength of a noble character and the accomplishments of the scholar and the gentleman. Mr. Taylor, early in its history, became a life member of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, to the publications of which he contributed so much of incomparable value and in the progress of which he took an active interest. As a sympathetic friend has noted, perhaps no more appropriate tribute, in epitome, could be paid to the tastes and acquirements of Colonel Taylor in the studies of antiquity than that expressed by his appreciative friend General John Beatty, who dedicated one of the later of his most interesting works, "The Alco- huans," in the following words: "This volume is respectively dedicated to Edward Livingston Taylor, a lover of the great forests and prairies, as they come ever fresh from the hands of the Creator, and to whom the ancient mounds, squares, octagons and circles of the Ohio Valley are not only in themselves objects of curious interest, but incentives as well to pleasant conjecture with respect to the people who built them."     AVERY'S UNITED STATES. The Burrows Brothers, Cleveland, Ohio, have issued the Seventh Volume of their unequalled History of the United States-we say

unequalled because that is true, as to the completeness with which the history is recited and the attractiveness, indeed splendor, with which the work is mechan- ically produced.  That Mr. Avery, the author, is a most painstaking and pleasing writer is granted, even by those who may criticize other features of the work. (These criticisms, however, seem to be confined to the incidental features, of arrangement and execution, rather than the substance or main purpose and re- sult of the work. An historian should first give the facts, second the facts only pertinent to a thorough knowledge of the progress and interpretation of the events he should set forth the matter chosen for presentation, in an entertain- ing  way   as  possible -as  Roosevelt

said in his scholarly address before the University of Oxford (on June 7), speaking of the recording of history: "We must of course cordially agree that accuracy in recording facts and appreciation of their relative worth and inter-relationship are just as necessary in

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