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The arduous banality of mowing, raking, pitching, stacking, and sweating of the August haying operation was all completed in the fields before incidental work had finished on the big farmhouse near Table Rock. But the stifling heat of summer was over in early September when JOHN took time out from his daily activities to attend to some special business. Exactly a month later, the TAYLOR home would have additional occupants. Two sets of wheels on a southbound road vehicle rolled toward the state line on Sunday, September 8th, and JOHN TAYLOR gripped the leather reins which would direct his team into Kansas. The laboring horses, like the 46-year-old driver, would be needing to rest and be fed on their southeastward journey. JOHN was obligated to choose a stopping point somewhere along the bumpy way, knowing the lengthy trip to St. Joseph, MO, always took at least two full days getting there. Onward to the east lay Padonia, a town begun by the famed Kansas Redleg, Jim Lane, near the Half-breed Reservation. In the eight and a half years since migrating from Kentucky, the happy traveler from Nebraska had seen this trail before. Rambling through the countryside, he turned his thoughts again to a passenger train steaming out of Ft. Wayne, IN. Having viewed 80 miles of roadway since leaving home, his weary animals clip-clopped into Elwood, KS, on Tuesday. The anxious visitor took the ferry across the Missouri River and ventured into a growing city of more than 10,000 inhabitants, and soon set himself to locating the St. Joe railway station. A returning commuter named Nancy was coming in from the east, and she fully expected to see his smiling summer-tanned face upon arrival. After long hours of jostling hundreds of miles in a railroad passenger car, young Nancy would willingly accompany the amenable blacksmith on a shorter ride back to Table Rock. The welcome reunion would make a much more pleasant return trip to Nebraska for both. And in his own estimation, the whole adventure amounted to a fairly satisfactory week's diversion for the Nebraska farmer. Fall's seasonal colors had begun to decorate the 1872 Nebraska countryside along the Pawnee City road as the properly-attired driver, JOHN TAYLOR, contentedly guided his horse-drawn rig into town on October 6, and headed toward the Sunday worship services down at the First Presbyterian Church on the south side of the city square. Before the mid-autumn day was over, farmer JOHN happily stopped by Reverend Henry M. Giltner's house for the minister to fulfill a promised favor. At the Ridge Parsonage, an agreeable Nancy Wyman, the third-oldest daughter of Nicholas and Sarah Kerns, became JOHN's new wife.  This building was constructed in 1877. The original church was built in 1868 at another downtown location. The attractive bride had been the widow of Civil War casualty Decatur Wyman, with three small sons of her own, George, William, and Frank. The 34-year-old Pennsylvania native would respectfully call her new husband "Mr. Taylor" and would habitually dress him in white shirts. Nancy became the only mother that little 4-year-old JOHN THOMAS TAYLOR ever remembered being able to call his own. By authority of President U. S. Grant, on Monday, February 10, 1873, Nancy (Kerns) Taylor, previously widow of a Civil War veteran, officially acquired her homestead in Pawnee county, NE. She had settled on the land five years earlier and now had final legal claim to the acreage. |
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