I found this article by a Blackburn descendant. It clarifies not only who cleared Isaac Taylor's name, something my mother didn't know, but also how the Blackburn pastors wind up on my family tree.
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A few notes on the Taylor brothers - Isaac’s father, George Taylor, came to Blount County. A Revolutionary War veteran and devout Methodist, George Taylor was present when all four of his sons were baptized on the same occasion and heard Reverend James Axley pray that all might become ministers. Three of the boys – Isaac, William, and Harris – did in fact answer the call. The Taylor family settled on Cedar Mountain and built a Methodist Church named Shiloh.
Reverend Isaac Taylor and his wife Hannah were residents of the Cedar Mountain community when Hannah disappeared between dusk and dawn on a spring day in 1832. Her disappearance caused a sensation for she left not only Isaac but six young children including one infant who was still nursing. No one in the Shiloh Church or community could imagine Hannah leaving on her own. Soon there was talk that Isaac had not searched very hard for his wife and when some bones were found in the trunk of a tree, Isaac was arrested. On close examination the bones proved to be animal remains; and as there was no evidence linking Isaac to a crime other than speculation, the grand jury failed to charge him. His good name was ruined just the same. To his credit Isaac Taylor maintained his faith and continued his ministry “exulting in the consolation of the Gospel.”
Six years passed before William Baxter Blackburn solved the “crime.” While in a store in Texas, William saw Hannah Taylor with a man he recognized from Blount County. Spotting William, Hannah quickly left the store. William returned to Alabama and added the final chapter to the case of the missing wife. Hannah’s disappearance and “elopement” enthralled the community for a generation becoming a part of area folklore and inspiring at least one bad poem.
The Blackburn family remembered the story longer than most. For when Malissa died in 1848 leaving William a widower with eight small children, he married Isaac Taylor’s niece, Lydia. By the time my mother heard the story, the search for Hannah Taylor had become the reason William Blackburn traveled to Texas – only one of several times William visited the state according to Koger Blackburn. Soon after his marriage to Lydia Taylor, William Blackburn was licensed to preach in the Methodist Church. His new father-in-law, William Taylor, had founded a church at Cedar Mountain now named “Taylor Memorial United Methodist Church” in the Chalkville area of Trussville, where he is buried. William Taylor was remembered by historian Anson West as “an able preacher, a man of more than ordinary powers of intellect … (who) maintained a good name and was loved by the people among whom he exercised his ministry.” The description of William Taylor by Anson West is not mere flattery for in the same text West describes other preachers in far less favorable terms.
Rev. William Baxter Blackburn, like both his grandfathers Rev. James A. Blackburn and Rev. William Taylor (my three great grand uncle who founded Taylor Memorial UMC), was a Methodist minister.
This is present day First United Methodist Church in Brandon, Mississippi. I took this picture on a recent vacation with the family. Brandon is just off I-20 east of Jackson.
