Alfred A. Taylor - Early Life

Early Life

Alfred A. Taylor was born in the Happy Valley community of Carter County, Tennessee as the son of Emma Haynes and Nathaniel Green Taylor, a Methodist minister and twice US Representative as a Whig from the First District. Alf grew up in a political family; his mother was the sister of Landon Carter Haynes, Democratic Speaker of the House of Tennessee and later a Confederate senator from Tennessee. Alf and his brother Robert Taylor, who both became active in politics, although for different parties, were first cousins of Nathaniel Edwin Harris, later Governor of Georgia (1915–1917).

The young Taylor attended Duffield Academy in Elizabethton, Tennessee; Buffalo Institute (later Milligan College), also in Tennessee; and the schools of Edge Hill and Pennington Seminary (in Pennington, New Jersey).

At the age of 19, in 1867 Taylor accompanied his father, then Commissioner of Indian Affairs under President Andrew Johnson, to join the Indian Peace Commission in present-day Kansas in its effort to end the Plains Wars. It negotiated the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867 with southern Plains Indians, bringing about their removal to reservations in Indian Territory. The young Taylor had no official role but was witness to historic times. Late in his life, in 1924 Taylor wrote an account and published it in the Chronicles of Oklahoma.

After his study of law, Taylor was admitted to the bar in 1874 and commenced practice in Jonesboro, Washington County, Tennessee.