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If 31-year-old JOHN TAYLOR glanced at his 1857 calendar when awakening in the early morning of November's fourth Sunday, he'd have noticed the date being the 22nd. At the TAYLOR household in Hawesville, KY, his 26-year-old wife, MARY, was at midpoint of a pregnancy. John was at the midpoint of his life, which would continue another 31 years. Although his father back in Scotland was remarried, perhaps JOHN was aware that this day would have been his birth parents' wedding anniversary. ROBERT TAYLOR and BARBARA HAY had married 36 years earlier on that same date, almost four and a half years before JOHN was born. British author George Eliot was celebrating her 38th birthday on this day. Originally named Mary Ann Evans, she would soon write the novels Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner. Through the next three quarters of a century, future celebrities, Vice-President John Nance Garner, French leader Charles De Gaulle, songwriter Hoagy Carmichael, aviator Wiley Post, language instructor Charles Berlitz, baseball pitcher Lew Burdette, and actors Robert Vaughn, Geraldine Page, Jamie Lee Curtis & Mariel Hemingway, tennis champions Billie Jean King & Boris Becker, and comic actor Rodney Dangerfield would each be born on that very same day of various years. But no one could have anticipated that yet, much less cared a whole lot. There was no way any psychic could have foretold that an American President would be suspiciously murdered at Dallas, 106 years later, on that very day. No way anyone in 1857 could have known -- as JOHN's elder brother Robert at Hawley, PA, could not have perceived that before this autumn day of November 22nd was finished at St. Louis, MO, their beloved brother Magnus, who always seemed to be struggling for better health, would pass from this world. At Hawesville, MARY gave birth to another daughter on Tuesday, April 13, 1858. Agnes Frances was named for her revered uncle who had been deceased four and a half months. The late Magnus Francis Taylor himself had been named for his paternal grandfather. Therefore, while naming their new daughter, the TAYLOR family was indirectly honoring the baby's great-grandfather also. |
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