The following information was assembled from numerous sources and cannot be used directly as proof of Qualifying Service or Lineage.
It is considered a research aid and is intended to assist in locating sources that can be used as proof.
Author: Nathaniel Lane Taylor
Richard Taylor (Virginia militia) was born in Frederick County, Virginia, 10 Dec. 1760, son of Harrison and Jane (Curlet) Taylor; he died in Ohio County, Kentucky, 9 Dec. 1843 and is buried there on his farm, east of Beaver Dam, Ohio Co. He married (1) in Frederick Co., Va., 11 June 1782, Sarah Ann Cornett, b. Frederick Co., 31 July 1760, d. there, 11 Feb. 1795, daughter of Thomas and Marjory (—) Cornett (she was buried on the Jeremiah Smith farm, near Gore, Virginia). Richard married (2) Frederick Co., 1 March 1796, Dorcas Thomas, who d. in Ohio County, Kentucky, 21 Aug. 1836 “in the 63rd year of her age,” probably a granddaughter of Ellis Thomas of Back Creek, Frederick Co. Dorcas is buried with Richard. Richard Taylor had seven children with his first wife and eight children with his second wife.
Richard Taylor served two tours with the Frederick County Militia during the Revolutionary War. The first was fall-winter of 1777-78, under Capt. John Gilkerson, in a company of recruits raised for defense of the Ohio River. In his pension application (dated 1842) he stated that “He was informed that this company composed a part of the command of Colonel McIntosh who was then . . . in command of a fort on the Ohio River. . . . He marched across the mountains westward and met the militia returning, marched back, and remained in said company untill the spring of the year 1778.”
His second tour was in 1781: “In the month of April or May in the year of 1781 he volunteered and joined a Company of Riflemen then commanded by Captain Marcus [Marquis] Calmes, in the battalion under command of Major Scott and [Col. William] Darke’s Regiment. [Capt. Henry] Bedinger was Adjutant, and was attached to or belonged to [Brig. Gen’l Edward] Stephens’s Brigade. We were immediately marched on to James River, to a place called Maldens Hill, near to Richmond. Served Eight months as a Militia man, near York, and vicinity. Remained in the Service untill the surrender of Caornwalis in the fall of the Year 1781. During this campaign we were joined by the French Troops under command of Lafayette, at Williamsburgh in the State of Virginia, at which latter place he received a written discharge, which he lost by the burning of his house about ten years since.”
Richard lived in Frederick Co., Va. until 1798, when he migrated to Ohio County, Kentucky. Richard settled there as a farmer and merchant near the town of Hartford. In 1819, he represented Ohio County in the Kentucky state legislature. Richard Taylor sought a federal Revolutionary veterans’ pension in August 1842 (Application #R10425). The application was pending when he died on 10 Dec. 1843.
A detailed book on Richard Taylor’s family, with ancestors and descendants, is Nathaniel Lane Taylor, An American Taylor Family: Descendants of Richard Taylor (d. 1679), of North Farnham Parish in the Northern Neck of Virginia, for Seven Generations (the author: 1992–), available (free) online atnltaylor.net.
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