James Brainerd Taylor, 1801-1829

James Brainerd Taylor was born Middle Haddam, Connecticut. Taylor was a Lawrenceville School graduate, class of 1823, and of Princeton University, class of 1826. He died while still a student at Yale Seminary. Due to his frail health he would go during the winter to live in a warmer climate. He died of tuberculosis while in Virginia, at the home of a prominent Southern Presbyterian, John Holt Rice. James Brainerd Taylor was buried near Union Seminary at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, then was reinterred in the early 1920's to the Hampden-Sydney College Church Cemetery in Virginia where his remains remain today.

John Holt Rice was invited to be the president of Princeton in 1822, but refused the position in order to establish a seminary in Virginia. Four years after Taylor's death in 1833, the Memoir of James Brainerd Taylor appeared. It was compiled by John Holt Rice, who died in 1831 while working on it, and J.H. Rice's surviving brother, Benjamin Holt Rice. At the time Benjamin Holt Rice completed the Memoir he was the pastor of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Princeton, New Jersey, (now the Nassau Presbyterian Church). James Brainerd Taylor did make a spiritual impact in the Lawrenceville/Princeton area when a student there for a combined 7 years (1819-1826), and his legacy lingered for up to three generations after his untimely death.

The origins of the James Brainerd Taylor obelisk, actually a cenotaph, are unclear. Perhaps Benjamin Holt Rice had the obelisk erected to the memory of James Brainerd Taylor. Another possibility could be the Philadelphian Society of Nassau Hall, 1825-1930, primarily founded by J.B. Taylor in February 1825, and continues today as the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship, that had the obelisk erected years later and after Taylor's two memoirs became highly popular in the mid-to-late 1800s in the U.S. and overseas. There is also a similar memorial stone/obelisk in the Taylor Family burial plot at Union Hill Cemetery in his hometown of Middle Haddam, Connecticut.

I. Francis Kyle III
Port Angeles, WA

Bibliography:

• Memoir of James Brainerd Taylor. By John Holt Rice, D.D., and Benjamin Holt Rice, D.D. New York: Jocelyn, Darling & Co., 1833. Reviewed in the The Princeton review. Volume 6, Issue 1, Jan 1834, pp. 51-58

• An Uncommon Christian: James Brainerd Taylor (1801–1829), Forgotten Evangelist In America's Second Great Awakening. By I. Francis Kyle III, Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, Jan. 2008

• Of Intense Brightness: The Spirituality of Uncommon Christian James Brainerd Taylor. By I. Francis Kyle III, Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, May 2008

• A comprehensive Biography of James Brainerd Taylor by I. Francis Kyle III is available on the Uncommon Christian Ministries website.