Abner Taylor Papers

Abner Taylor was born in Maine in 1829. After moving with his family to Ohio in the 1830s, he settled in Chicago, Illinois in 1860. During the Civil War, Mr. Taylor served in the Union Army and as a special agent to the Treasury Department. Many later letters address him as "Colonel Taylor." Following the war, he engaged in many areas of business, including railroad and real estate development. He was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1884 and to the United States House of Representatives in 1889.

In the course of his real estate business, Mr. Taylor and his partners, the "Capitol Syndicate," were hired to construct the Texas capitol building in Austin. The "Capitol Syndicate" was officially the Capitol Freehold Land and Investment Company, which was organized by Taylor, Charles B. Farwell, John V. Farwell, and Amos Babcock and backed by English investors. The investment group received 3,000,000 acres in northwest Texas in payment for the building construction. The majority of this acreage became the XIT Ranch. Although he was not involved in the daily operations of the ranch, at the tum of the 20th century Mr. Taylor maintained frequent correspondence with George Loving regarding the potential sale of all or part of the ranch property.

Mr. Taylor served as president of the Brazos River Channel & Dock Company, which sought to create a port at Velasco to compete with Galveston. In Texas, he also invested in the Velasco, Brazos & Northern Railway, the Velasco Terminal Railway Company and the Texas Land & Immigration Company, which owned the land on both sides of the Brazos near its terminus at the Gulf. Abner Taylor died in 1903 and is buried in Washington, D. C. He was survived by his wife, Clara Babcock Taylor.