William Taylor (bishop)

William Taylor (1821-1902) was an American Missionary Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, elected in 1884.

Ancestry and birth

Taylor was born 2 May 1821 in Rockbridge County—home to Sam Houston (b.1796), Robert E. Lee (b.1807), and Stonewall Jackson (b.1824)—in the Commonwealth of Virginia. He was the oldest of eleven children born to Stuart Taylor and Martha Hickman. [William Taylor. "Story of My Life: An Account of What I Have Thought and Said and Done in My Ministry of More than Fifty-Three Years in Christian Lands and Among the Heathen. Written by Myself." John Clark Ridpath (ed). New York: Hunt & Eaton, 1896, 32.] In his autobiography, "Story of My Life" (1896), Taylor describes his grandfather, James, as one of five brothers who were “Scotch-Irish of the Old Covenantor type…who emigrated from County Armagh, Ireland, to the colony of Virginia, about one hundred and thirty years ago” (i.e. 1766). The Hickman family was of English ancestry and settled in Delaware in the late 1750s. Both families “fought for American freedom in the Revolution of 1776” and afterward emancipated their slaves. [Ibid 25] Taylor’s father, Stuart, was a “tanner and currier—a mechanical genius of his times”; his mother was “mistress of the manufacture of all kinds of cloth.” Both parents, he says, were of “powerful constitution of body and mind…their English school education quite equal to the average of their day.” [Ibid 26.]

Conversion to Christ

Before William was ten years old, his grandmother had taught him the Lord's Prayer and explained that he could become a son of God. He longed for this relationship, but was unsure how to obtain it. Overhearing the story of a poor Black man who had received salvation, he wondered why he could not also. He recounts in his autobiography, :"soon after, as I sat one night by the kitchen fire, the Spirit of the Lord came on me and I found myself suddenly weeping aloud and confessing my sins to God in detail, as I could recall them, and begged Him for Jesus' sake to forgive them, with all I could not remember; and I found myself trusting in Jesus that it would all be so, and in a few minutes my heart was filled with peace and love, not the shadow of a doubt remaining."

He entered the Baltimore Annual Conference in 1843. Bishop Taylor traveled to San Francisco, California in 1849, and organized the first Methodist church in San Francisco. Between 1856 and 1883 he traveled in many parts of the world as an evangelist. He was elected Missionary Bishop of Africa in 1884, and retired in 1896. He wrote:
* "Seven Years' Street Preaching in San Francisco" (1857)
* "Christian Adventures in South Africa" (1867)
* "Four Years' Campaign in India" (1875)
* "Our South American Cousins" (1878)
* "Self-Supporting Missions in India" (1882)
* "The Story of My Life" (1895)
* "Flaming Torch in Darkest Africa" (1898)

ee also

*List of Bishops of the United Methodist Church
*
* William C. Ringenberg, "Taylor University: The First 150 Years" (Upland IN: Taylor University Press, 1996) ISBN 0-9621187-2-9
* Justus Henry Nelson - Amazon missionary recruited by Taylor

External links

* [http://bp0.blogger.com/_cwtF2Oj4ePs/Ra5NNH1gZwI/AAAAAAAAADw/yAcQzCaX4kI/s1600-h/Sentinel.jpgPhoto of William Taylor Hotel, 100 McAllister, San Francisco opened in 1930 with Methodist Church inside until May 1937, now housing for Hastings Law School (Photo by Mark Ellinger)]

References