Yardley Taylor

Yardley Taylor (1794-1868) Virginia Quaker abolitionist and map maker. He devoted much of his life to anti-slavery and progressive causes.

Yardley Taylor

Map of Loudoun County, Virginia, by Yardley Taylor, made in the year 1853

Yardley Taylor (December 12, 1794 - February 20, 1868) was a member of the Society of Friends (Quaker) living in the Quaker village of Goose Creek, Loudoun County, Virginia. Though living in a Southern slave state, Taylor was an abolitionist and devoted much of his life to anti-slavery causes. By professional occupation, Yardley Taylor was an arborist and ran a horticultural business from his property near Goose Creek. He also served as a Loudoun County surveyor and rural postal carrier. Taylor's knowledge of the roads, byways as well as the landowners of Loudoun county, led him in 1853 to make a highly detailed map of the county.

As early as 1824 Yardley Taylor was involved in anti-slavery efforts. He was President of the Manumission and Emigration Society of Loudoun, with his brother, Henry S. Taylor, serving as the Society's secretary. Taylor printed letters and articles in Loudoun newspapers which contained information and mission statements of the Manumission and Emigration Society's goals. In August of 1827 Yardley Taylor organized a three day "Anti-Slavery Convention" in the Goose Creek Meeting school house, in Loudoun County, Virginia.[1]

The Manumission and Emigration Society's primary goal was encouraging slave owners to manumit their enslaved workers. The Society also raised money to purchase enslaved men and women and, after manumission, settle them in a non-slave state, or repatriate them to Liberia, to live as citizens in a free, democratic society. This ambitious effort was widely supported by many of Taylor's fellow Quakers and other anti-slavery advocates. However, the notion of this and similar "colonization" societies eventually proved unpopular with freed blacks, who understandably didn't want to have to leave their homes and families in America in order to experience freedom. Also, the costs of buying enslaved men and women then paying for long ocean voyages proved prohibitively expensive.

In 1828 Yardley Taylor was arrested for helping an enslaved man known only as Harry attempt to escape bondage in Loudoun County, northern Virginia. Harry was captured on his journey north and documents found on him included a letter from Yardley Taylor to fellow Quaker Jonathan Jessup who lived in York, Pennsylvania. Asking his Pennsylvania friend Jessup to help Harry, Taylor's letter also describes Harry's dire circumstances: the enslaved man had recently learned he was about to be sold South, away from his family. Taylor had given Harry a handwritten list of towns and mileage leading to York, Pennsylvania and this list was also found on Harry at the time of his capture.[2]

Taylor eventually pled guilty to Loudoun County's charge of "enticing, persuading and advising a certain slave named Harry" to escape. Yardley Taylor paid a fine. Harry's fate is unknown.

Hannah Brown Taylor (1795-1880) Quaker wife of Yardley Taylor, raised eight children and supported anti-slavery causes.

Through the 1830's Yardley Taylor and his wife, Hannah Brown Taylor, raised eight children on their farm, Evergreen, outside Goose Creek village. The Taylors continued with their arborist/nursery work, focusing on apple trees. By 1845, documents and letters again show Yardley Taylor to be involved in a high profile case, this time one of national importance. A young African American mother, Kitty Payne, and her three children, had been freed by her former owner. Payne moved her young family to Pennsylvania, where she supported herself as a laundress. But on the night of July 24, 1845 Payne and her children were kidnapped by slave catchers and bound into a wagon to take back into Virginia and sell into slavery. An extensive study of the Kitty Payne kidnapping and subsequent court case was done by Meghan Linsley Bishop and can be found here. Yardley Taylor, along with Quakers from the Pennsylvania and Virginia communities who knew of Kitty Payne's kidnapping, raised money for her to hire a lawyer to appeal her kidnapping. The court trial, held in Rappahannock County, Virginia, resulted in Kitty Payne and her children regaining their freedom. It is the only recorded Southern court ruling in favor of a former enslaved individual against a white citizen claiming legal ownership over them. Original trial documents of this case: Samuel Maddox, Jr. v. Kitty Payne can be seen at the Rappahannock County Courthouse Clerk's Office, in Washington, Virginia.

In 1857, Yardley Taylor was the subject of an anonymously written political broadside, posted around Loudoun County. The broadside was a long screed against Taylor, focusing on his abolitionist work, and naming him the "chief of the local abolitionist clan" and "president of the underground railroad." An original copy of the 1857 broadside is in the Thomas Balch Archives Library, located in Leesburg, Loudoun County, Virginia. The author of the broadside is thought to be James Treyhorn, a pro-slavery Loudoun County citizen. Treyhorn had attended a 1856 meeting held in Goose Creek which had been also attended by Yardley Taylor and other anti-slavery Quakers. The meeting had descended into chaos over the topic of slavery, resulting in one young Quaker fleeing Virginia for his own safety.

The Civil War from 1861-1865 affected Quakers living in Loudoun County, Virginia with particular hardships. They were caught between two warring enemies. Though the Quakers were Confederate citizens, Confederate soldiers didn't trust them: Quakers were known to be against slavery and against the nation's disunion. Confederate troops would frequently raid the Loudoun County Quakers' farms. At the same time, U.S. Federal troops moving through northern Virginia saw the state's population, including Quakers, as the enemy and treated them as such. An example is the "Burning Raid" of November/December 1864, when citizens of Shenandoah Valley saw their livestock driven away, crops destroyed and barns burned. The destruction was carried out by Union troops acting on U.S. Army Lieut. General Ulysses Grant's orders. Yardley and Hannah Taylor, along with fellow Quakers living in the region, lost barns and property in the raid.

In spite of personal losses, Taylor's support of the Union never waivered. After war ended in April 1865, Yardley Taylor turned his political efforts to Reconstruction and how best to intergrate freed blacks into a transformed society. In June of 1865 he wrote a letter to Union appointed Governor of Virginia, Francis Pierpont. In the letter, Yardley Taylor expressed the importance of extending voting rights to black males, using black citizenship in the British West Indies islands of Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad as examples to study and follow. Yardley Taylor had lived to see his goal of ending slavery become reality.

Yardley died in 1868. A reference to his death at age 75, "...from a cold contracted while carrying shingles up a ladder to shingle his house" is in the Alexandria Gazette March 18, 1870 edition.

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