The LuLac Edition # 5,716, July 19th, 2026

 

 

GEORGE TAYLOR

REPLACEMENT SIGNER

 

 

George Taylor   was an American ironmaster and politician who was a Founding Father of the United States and a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of Pennsylvania. His former home, the George Taylor House in Catasauqua, Taylor was born in the North of Ireland (now Northern Ireland), possibly Ulster, in 1716. He emigrated to the American colonies at age 20, landing in Philadelphia in 1736.

According to early 18th century biographies of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, he is believed to have been the son of a Protestant clergyman. To pay for his passage, Taylor was indentured to Samuel Savage Jr., who was ironmaster at the French Creek Iron Works in Coventry in Chester County northwest of Philadelphia. Pennsylvania, was named a National Historic Landmark in 1971.

In 1738, Savage, his brother-in-law Samuel Nutt Jr., and his mother Anna Savage Nutt built Warwick Furnace, a cold blast, charcoal furnace to the west, which they named Warwick. Savage died in 1742, and the following year, Taylor married Savage's widow, Ann, whose maiden name was also Taylor. In 1745, under iron master John Potts, Taylor was made manager of the works, which consisted of the furnace and Coventry Forge. When Ann's son Samuel III reached legal age in 1752, the son assumed ownership of the mills by the terms of his father's will.

The Taylors continued to live at Warwick Furnace until 1755, when Taylor formed a partnership to lease the Durham Furnace in Upper Bucks County, north of Philadelphia. The ironworks, built in 1727, was started by a group of investors who were among Pennsylvania's wealthiest and most influential men, including James Logan, proprietor of the Pennsylvania colony for the Penn family, and William Allen, later the colony's chief justice and founder of Allentown, then called Northampton Town.

Shortly after becoming ironmaster at Durham, Taylor entered public life for the first time, serving as a justice of the peace in Bucks County, Pennsylvania from 1757 to 1763. When the lease for the Durham mill expired, the Taylors relocated to Easton, the county seat of Northampton County, where they purchased a stone house near the center of town and built a stable nearby. Continuing his interest in public affairs, Taylor was commissioned as a justice of the peace in Northampton County and was elected to the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly. He also helped build a new county courthouse in Easton's center square.

George Taylor was sent to Philadelphia in July 1775 to replace members of the Pennsylvania delegation to the Continental Congress who had refused to support independence The National Constitution Center+1.

When the Pennsylvania Assembly changed its position in April 1775, it recalled the delegates who had opposed separation from Britain and sent in a new group of five men willing to approve independence. Taylor was one of those five The National Constitution Center.

He arrived in Philadelphia too late to vote on the July 4, 1776 vote to adopt the Declaration of Independence, but he signed the engrossed copy on August 2, 1776. This all happened because before the vote for independence, five of Pennsylvania's delegates, all Loyalists, were forced to resign. On July 20, Taylor was among the replacements appointed by the Assembly. One of his first duties as a member of Congress was to affix his signature to the Declaration of Independence, which he did on August 2, along with most delegates. Of the 56 signers, he was one of only eight who were foreign born, the only one to have been indentured, and the only one to hold the position of ironmaster.  Of the 56 signers of the Declaration, Taylor was one of the 41 who owned slaves.

In failing health, Taylor moved back to Easton in April 1780 and died there on February 23, 1781, at the age of 65.  Taylor was buried in St. John's Lutheran Church cemetery across from his residence at Fourth and Ferry Streets in Easton. When the church property was sold in 1870 for construction of a public school, Taylor was re-interred at Easton Cemetery.[3] Residents dedicated a monument there in Taylor's honor in 1855, and his body rests in front of the memorial.  The house he leased in his final days is now known as the Parsons-Taylor House. Easton founder William Parsons built it in 1753 and is Easton's oldest still-standing house today.