One Story I Won't Write

-

 Normally, as would be expected, each article I write for my blog is a story about some aspect of family history or some quirky phenomenon or tale from the past. This is about one story I won’t be writing. It is worth telling, but someone else did it so well that I see no need to rehash their work. Following is basic information and the best, most accessible source of information about his life. 


Lathrop Minor Taylor (1805-1892) - Born Clinton, New York; died in South Bend, Indiana. Lathrop was the brother of my fourth great-grandmother, Laura Taylor Suttenfield. He is the co-founder of the city of South Bend, Indiana. In the 1940s, a high school history teacher, working on advanced degrees, chose Lathrop as the subject of his thesis. Bert Anson later became a professor of history and expert on the Miami Indians. He published three articles in Indiana History Magazine on Lathrop. They are very readable and can easily be found online:


Anson, Bert. “The Early Years of Lathrop M. Taylor, The Fur Trader,” Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. 44, No. 4 (December 1948), pp. 367-383. 

     Anson, Bert. “Lathrop M. Taylor. Hanna and Taylor Partnership,” Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. 45, No. 2 (June 1949), pp. 147-170.

     Anson, Bert. “Lathrop M. Taylor, The Fur Trader,” Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. 45, No. 4 (December 1949), pp. 369-382.


     I have written stories about or including Lathrop’s father Israel Taylor, his youngest sister Ellen, his sisters Laura, Eliza and Elvira and his brother William. 

     

     

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nothing But An Old Maid

-
Image
     English author Eliza Lynn Linton was harshly critical of women's rights and independent single women. Ironically, she supported herself as an independent, single woman most of her life -- and looked like the stereotype of the old maid.  It was a dreaded fate for a woman. Old maid. Short of being a “fallen woman,” it was the worst fate that could befall her. They were pitied and reviled. She was a “tragedy,” a “leftover,” a “public and private nuisance,” “a failure of womanhood,” an object of derision, scorn, and ridicule. “Superfluous; “redundant, pathetic.”      “What girl can hear this opprobrious title in connection with herself and not feel an instinctive shudder and an involuntary shrinking from the very name?” asked a writer in the Bolivar, Missouri newspaper in 1867. “Old Maid; how fraught with meaning those two monosyllables; and yet how often we hear it fall in tones of derision from both sexes, “oh, she’s nothing but an old maid!” The term in itself is a reproac
Read more

The Curse of Kaskaskia and Sister Josephine Barber

-
  Kaskaskia. It’s an ancient name, dramatic and evocative. Kaskaskia is a river, a 325 mile tributary of the Mississippi in Illinois. It is the name of a people, a tribe that once was part of the Illinois Confederation. The few remaining members joined with the Peoria Confederation when they were forced to move to Indian Territory – Oklahoma – in 1867, ceasing to exist as a separate tribe.      Kaskaskia was also a town, settled by French trappers and traders, with a population of 20,000 at its peak. It was once an important center, a key supply point for merchants throughout the Mississippi Valley, and Illinois’ first territorial capital. But by 1833, Kaskaskia’s glory days were over. It was on its way to the seeming extinction that came to the tribe.      “Asleep or paralyzed,” wrote a priest around this time, Kaskaskia “lies dreaming over its past and its prospects are no more. No press, no railroad, no mill, no smoke of manufacture rising out of the blue sky, no bridge, only a flat
Read more

Wedding Gift Must-Haves of the 1870s and '80s

-
Image
                                      Pickle castors seemed to be the must-have wedding gift. If you were a middle-class Protestant couple getting married in the 1870s and ‘80s, there were three nearly certain things: you were marrying at the bride’s parents’ home; everyone would sit down to a dinner cooked by your mother, and you were getting at least one pickle castor as a gift. Most likely, you were getting four or five.       What was a pickle castor? What were other typical gifts? Long lists of gifts accompanied many wedding announcements in the newspapers, giving us a glimpse into what was valued by middle and upper-class folk. It was common to state that the gifts were “numerous and costly,” or “useful and costly.” Useful was in the eye of the beholder - or the time period, as the majority of gifts were tableware of all sorts - including the pickle castor.       People pickled a lot, and ate a lot of pickled produce. A pickle
Read more