Frank W. Taylor Sr. (11/13/1862 - 1931) was the sixth child
of William Johnston Taylor (10/4/1825 – 12/30/1885) and Katherine Garver
(10/7/1827 – 10/6/1865). William had
been born near Columbus, Ohio and died in Minonk, Illinois, apparently from a
heart attack suffered when he tried to save his horse barn from a fire.
Katherine was of Pennsylvania-Dutch extraction and spoke only Dutch until she
was eight. William and Katherine were
married 1/17/1849 in Ohio and had seven children.
Their child, Frank Wilbur, was born 11/13/1862 in a covered
wagon as the family relocated from Ohio to Illinois. His mother Katherine died when he was three
and he was sent to live with his uncle until his father remarried a Scotswoman named
Jane Jamison. When Frank was twelve, he went to work for on a farm near their
home in Minonk. After returning for a winter school term, he signed on to work
on another farm for two years. The terms of the indenture were that the farmer would
furnish all clothing, room and board, and Frank would be paid $40 and a pig the
first year and $50 the second year.
After a stint on another Illinois farm, he studied for seven
months at the Normal School of Valparaiso in Indiana and then traveled and worked
at odd jobs until falling ill with typhoid fever in Beatrice, Nebraska. He
returned home to recover and in 1883 went to work in De Pere, Wisconsin where
his younger brother William worked as a telegrapher for the Chicago and
Northwestern Railroad. By 1886 Frank had
risen from baggage man to chief clerk. In De Pere, Frank lived in a boarding house
owned by the Toutloff family from Quebec and there he met Mary Jane (or Marie
Jeanne), the eighth of their eleven children. They married on Aug 26, 1886 and
settled in West De Pere.
Their first child, Frank William*, was born June 10, 1887,
followed by William James, born May 8, 1889 and a girl, Irene May, born Feb 14,
1891 who died Oct 10, 1901 at age ten from “brain fever.”
Mary Jane died of nephritis (kidney disease) January 10,
1909 at age 42 or 43. After his wife’s death, Frank resigned from the railroad
and went to New York to study metaphysical philosophy and a religious healing
art called “New Thought.” He returned to open his own ‘New Thought” healing practice
in Green Bay and ran it for twenty years. At age 53, he married Leola McGruer,
the 31-year-old daughter of Green Bay lawyer (she was the same age as his son
Frank W. Taylor Jr). Leola died two years later of a tubular pregnancy. Frank died in 1931 at age 69 and is buried in
Woodlawn Cemetery in Green Bay.
*FWT Sr.’s notes refer to his son as Frank William, the
Taylor bible to Frank Wilbur; Frank Jr. settled on Wilbur.
This biography is drawn from a report that Virginia Taylor
Klose put together in 1988, recording what her father, FWT Jr. had compiled
from notes FWT Sr. had written for him in the 1920’s.
