Thomas Taillor (Taylor)
MSA SC 3520-1221
Biography:
Thomas Taillor (Taylor) immigrated to Maryland by 1658 as a free adult. He resided on "Taylor's Choice," on the West River Hundred in Anne Arundel County. He returned to England in 1688/89.
About 1659 he married Elizabeth Sparrow, the widow of a planter, about 1659. Anne had children by her first marriage: Thomas Sparrow, possibly Solomon Sparrow, and possibly Elizabeth Sparrow. Thomas and Anne had two additional children: a son John, who became a merchant in London by 1692, and a daughter Anne (m. Chew, d. 1702). Taillor studied law and was practicing by 1675. He became a justice of the peace. He served in the Lower House for Anne Arundel County in 1659/60 and in 1669, 1671, 1674-75, 1676-82, 1686-88. In 1671 he was also speaker of the Lower House and was instrumental in getting the Assembly to pass a law that year granting the proprietor an export duty of two shillings per hogshead of tobacco. He was a justice in Anne Arundel County from 1658 to 1661 and in 1663/64 to 1668. In 1671 he was also a coroner in Anne Arundel County. He was a member of the Council in 1673 until 1688/89, serving as president from 1685 to 1688. As president of the council, he was one of few Protestants in an appointed provincial office in the 1680s (he was an Anglican), and was replaced by a Catholic in that position in 1688. By 1676 he was a lieutenant colonel in the militia, and a colonel by 1677 until 1688/89. The reasons for his move to England in 1688/89 are unclear, and he was still alive and residing in London in 1709.
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