ISAAC TAYLOR (1807 - 1865)

As an eighteen-year-old orphan in England, Isaac Taylor learned that he would be sent to a workhouse; instead he ran away. After earning passage to New York aboard a sailing vessel, Taylor worked his way to Ohio. Having never attended school, his skills were limited but Taylor found work at a public house, where he so impressed his boss, a Mr. Scoville, that he helped Taylor buy a horse. The horse was rented out for fifty cents per day with proceeds going toward the purchase of another horse, then a buggy, and finally an entire livery business which Taylor managed until 1842. It was then that Taylor found his way to Racine.

In Racine Taylor’s fortunes grew, thanks to a lumber business he shared with Daniel Slauson. Both men lost their health due to the severe winter weather they endured at their timber site in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin. By 1863 Taylor had left the lumber business, putting his money instead into lucrative Chicago investments. When he died in 1865, property amounting to over $500,000 was left to his wife, Emerline Martin (1815-1866). When she died just a year after him, she provided in her will the $65,000 be given to Racine College (now The DeKoven Center). From that bequest, Taylor Hall was built. She left $180,000 to establish an orphan asylum, and whatever money remained after all her other bequests also sent to the asylum. Thus, some $250,000 was made available for establishing and maintaining the asylum for destitute children of Racine County. Mrs. Taylor knew, from conversations with her husband, that he desired to establish an orphanage in Racine. Today its original Gothic-style building is gone but the Taylor Homes still exists on Taylor Avenue (originally Asylum Avenue), which is named for Isaac and Emerline, as was Taylor Hall.

Their stately mansion, which once stood at 1024 South Main Street, was said to have been copied from a house Taylor admired while he was an impoverished orphan in England.

Submitted by Deborah Crowell