|
In early 1860, a bewildered Andrew Taylor wondered why he hadn't recently heard from his young cousin who had accompanied him from Scotland to Canada six years earlier. Robert K. had once promised JOHN TAYLOR that he would write to Andrew just "as soon as he got home." Andrew was diligently trying to maintain contact with all his relatives. The 23-year-old planned to travel to Kansas Territory in the latter part of February, and wanted to stop by at his brother James' Iowa farm on the way. On the eighth day of February, less than a week before Valentine's Day, Andrew stepped aboard a passenger train stopped at Cambridge, sat himself down, and perhaps he deliberated a mental image of his charming young sweetheart. Like himself, the girl was somewhat short in stature, but cheerful in her nature. Getting settled while the locomotive got underway, the young man very likely gazed out at the passing countryside and realized his remaining days being single were also quickly passing by. Andrew would wed the teenager named Elizabeth Edwards only two and a half months later. He may have also reflected upon his earlier thoughts while observing through the train window. With not a single written word having yet come from Robert K. Taylor by this early February Wednesday, Andrew couldn't perceive to what home Robert K. Taylor had to go before he could perform the simple task of writing a letter. On Thursday, March 1, probably in the area of Sligo, Clarion County, PA, Nancy Kerns, 21, married Decatur Wyman who would die about 28 months later near Richmond, VA, during the Civil War. Later in the same month of March, JOHN and Andrew's 24-year-old cousin was taking care of some special personal business on a Wednesday in Hawesville, an exercise he had already become eligible to perform four months earlier. The calendar displayed March 26, when Robert K. Taylor, "born in the County of Orkland and Shetland Scotland," swore to tell the truth and convinced James E. Stone that he had been in the USA at least five years. Robert applied at the Hancock County Courthouse for American citizenship, agreeing with the standard requirement to "renounce forever all allegiance to Every foreign prince potentate State or Sovernity & Particularly Victoria Queen of Great Britain & Ireland." |
| Copyright © 2000 Dick Taylor All Rights Reserved |