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Concluding their short stay in America sometime during 1853, the dissatisfied William Tait and his family resolved to return home to Orkney. Joseph Halcro also aimed himself for those same familiar shores. Some months earlier, they all had left Scotland on the very boat which had also transported William Taylor to the New World; but now they were expecting to be back in Orkney for the New Year. However, that same desire did not burn inside JOHN's younger brother. In late summer of 1853, the 18-year-old William was also sanguinely stationed aboard ship somewhere, but his vessel's destination wasn't the same as that of Halcro and the Taits. The young Scot decided the next opportunity to go ashore would put him on his way to brother Robert's place in Pennsylvania. William was happy enough to forego a retreat to Europe. Back on July 2nd, 1853, Russia had invaded the principalities of Turkey, raising concern and apprehension in France and England. The British Isles were being drawn into a warlike attitude after enjoying four decades of relative peace with other nations. The teenager William would probably have been exposed to conscription as a British foot-soldier, but knowing discretion is the better part of valor, he didn't want to go back to Great Britain and find out. Back in Orkney, his father had been sickly for at least a year and was unable to perform any manual labor. Nor had his stepmother, Eppie, been completely well there on their Orphir farm. William's younger brother, Andrew, would consider acquiring additional schooling for himself a few months later. He was working over at Kirkwall, but the 16-year-old was "not very settled" yet in his ways. Even though the crop raised on the TAYLOR acreage was not large, William's little sister Mary threshed and winnowed the grain entirely by herself, just as she had done single-handedly last year. Surely the most helpful worker in the household, Mary had just reached her 15th birthday as she tackled the 1853 family harvest. When time came to begin the field work of 1854, she would probably be alone again, naturally. A "good girl" in her father's estimation, Mary was intelligent, good-natured, capable, and very reliable. During the 1853 harvest season in eastern Pennsylvania, name-sake Robert Taylor dispatched money back to his appreciative father in Orkney. By way of a Kirkwall bank, JOHN also would soon direct funds to their ailing father, probably in early December. ROBERT was thankful to JOHN and MARY who had offered to bring him to America; however, he informed them his failing health prevented any serious thought of emigration. And before year's end, perhaps around Christmas, Magnus would send cash directly to ROBERT. In 1853, ROBERT's eldest son, James, bought a house on 40 acres of ground for $305. The JOHN TAYLOR family had arrived in Kentucky sometime before the crisp autumn of 1853, and MARY's brother William Wishart would also be staying at Hawesville during that same colorful season. Just previously, however, a late summer Tuesday found JOHN inside the Hancock County Courthouse at the intersection of Main Cross Street and Main Street. The new resident of Hawesville declared frankly that he had been in the U. S. a total of five years, and applied to county court clerk James E. Stone for citizenship on August 9. This dour Scottish blacksmith wanted to forfeit his unused privileges from Great Britain so he could become all-American. Just two months later, Robena R. was born to JOHN and MARY on Friday, October 7, 1853. Her pleased grandfather ROBERT, back at Orphir, Scotland, was very honored that the new American baby was named for himself and his own young daughter, 2 1/2-year-old Robina. October, 1853, saw the local coal mines surrendering quantities of somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 bushels a day, worth $480 to $600 when the yield reached consumers. But the eager proprietors were preparing to rush twice that amount into their expanded marketplace should such a requirement prove feasible. The Trabue coal-mining operation opened fresh pairs of excavations into the banks of the strip mine. They hired more workers and advertised for a purchase of 100 baby mules. They acquired an additional 75 improved rail cars and increased the number of dual rail tracks stretching from the mine banks northeastward all the way back down to the Ohio River. They procured ten new round-bottomed tow-boats for loading coal onto river vessels just outside Hawesville to the southeast. On Monday, December 5, JOHN sat down to write a letter to his father back in Orphir. For the past few months, JOHN and MARY had begun negotiating to purchase certain real estate. On Monday, February 20, 1854, the couple finalized the contract on property located about a half-mile from the waterfront in their little village, two pieces of adjoining land up in Hawesville's Out Lot 7. The plots embraced a higher part of town on Jefferson Street Extended, being opposite the river from the original part of Hawesville. Coal rights were retained by the Hawleys, original owners, and their heirs. And in early 1854, JOHN may have welcomed his brothers Magnus and William to Hawesville. Very likely, they came by boat down the Ohio. |
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