Pleasant Taylor

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Pleasant Taylor was born in Smith county, Tennessee, and from that state went to Indiana, where at the age of nineteen years he was married to Miss Jane Allison, a native of Pennsylvania, who accompanied her parents to Indiana in her girlhood days. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor lived for some time in Montgomery county, Indiana, afterward in Barry county, Missouri, and subsequently became residents of Clark county, Illinois, whence in 1843 they removed to Wapello county, Iowa. There they resided for a number of years, when they started for California, but the smallpox was so prevalent that they did not continue their journey beyond Pottawattamie county and settled eight miles south of the present home of our subject in Silver Creek township. He was the first gentleman to locate among the Mormons and bought a claim of D. Jacobs for four hundred and fifty dollars. This was before the first United States surveys had been made, but a colony of Mormons had located in this district and had done something toward developing the land. Upon the claim which he secured Mr. Taylor resided until February, 1855, when he removed to Washington township, settling at what is now Taylor's Station, the post office of Taylor being named in honor of the family. Mr. Taylor for several years kept the stage station on the line between Des Moines and Council Bluffs, this line being owned by the Western Stage Company, who were owners of various stage lines in the middle west and well known at that day. He also developed his farm, transforming the raw prairie into richly cultivated fields. His first wife died in 1868. There were five children of that marriage: James A., who died in Washington township at the age of sixty-two years; Mrs. Mary A. Gorton, living in Oklahoma; Thomas, who died at the age of four years; Pleasant M., who died at the age of fifteen years; and William H., of this review.

After the death of his first wife he married his housekeeper, Sidney A. Webb, of Silver Creek township.