Alfred A. Taylor

Alfred Alexander Taylor (August 6, 1848ndash November 25, 1931) was a Congressman from 1889-1895 and later the Governor of Tennessee from 1921 to 1923. Notably, in 1886 he lost the gubernatorial race to his younger brother, Robert. His father, Nathaniel Green Taylor was also a Congressman from Tennessee. He was also a first cousin of Nathaniel Edwin Harris, Governor of Georgia from 1915 to 1917.

Early life

He was born in the Happy Valley community of Carter County, Tennessee. He attended Duffield Academy, Elizabethton, Tenn., Buffalo Institute (later Milligan College), Tennessee, and the schools of Edge Hill and Pennington Seminary, New Jersey. He studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1874 and commenced practice in Jonesboro, Washington County, Tenn. He was the older brother of former Democratic Governor Robert Love Taylor who served from 1887 to 1891 and 1897 to 1899, and who had defeated him in the 1886 election.

Political life

Alf Taylor served in the state legislature starting in 1875.

First gubernatorial race, then Congress

In the 1886 election Alf Taylor was the Republican nominee and his brother Bob Taylor the Democrat. This contest was known as the "War of the Roses" after the event in English history in which the related York and Lancaster families fought for the English crown. Robert's supporters wore red roses, while Alfred's backers sported white roses.. [http://www.cqpolitics.com/2006/08/trivia080406.html] The two men travelled the state together, debating publicly at every stop and often sleeping at night in the same bed. His brother Robert won the race.

Two years later, he was elected to and served three terms as a member of the United States House of Representatives, 1889 to 1895. He never distanced himself overly from Republican politics between his time in Congress and his 1920 nomination for governor; although the state as a whole was predominantly Democratic, his native East Tennessee was equally ardently Republican.

Subsequent gubernatorial races

In 1910 Alf Taylor had waged a spirited campaign for the Republican gubernatorial nomination against the eventual nominee, Ben W. Hooper. When incumbent Democratic governor Malcolm R. Patterson subsequently withdrew from the race, Taylor's brother Robert, then a United States Senator, was nominated by the Democrats as a replacement. Hooper defeated Bob Taylor in the general election, giving Hooper a rare accomplishment in politics, the defeat of two brothers, one at a time, in the same year.

In 1920, Alf Taylor was the oldest nominee ever put forward by either major party for the office of governor of Tennessee. He and Bob were also the second (and to date last) set of full brothers to serve as governors of Tennessee; William Blount, governor of the predecessor Southwest Territory, and Willie Blount were half-brothers; Neill S. Brown and John C. Brown were full brothers. Interestingly, there were seven intervening governors serving between Bob Taylor's last term and Alf Taylor's only one; there were also seven intervening governors serving between the Brown brothers according to the official list. Bob Taylor had been deceased for over eight years when his older brother was inaugurated. Alf Taylor was the first governor of Tennessee chosen in an election in which women were eligible to vote; Tennessee's ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was the one which completed its ratification and brought about women's suffrage on a national basis.

Governorship

Taylor seemed to have a fairly successful administration. Highlights of it included the passage of a tax reform plan. Taylor was involved in the successful lobbying effort to have the federal government convert a nitrate plant built for World War I at Wilson Dam in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, on the Tennessee River not far south of the state line, into an electrical power plant for the benefit of the inhabitants of the Tennessee Valley. (This became part of the basis for the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority over a decade later.) Despite this apparent success, Taylor was defeated for re-election in 1922 by Democrat Austin Peay; he was to be last Republican chief executive of the state for almost half a century. Alf Taylor is buried in Monte Vista Cemetery in Johnson City, Tennessee adjacent to his brother Bob.

External links

* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6914666 Find-A-Grave biography]

References

* Taylor, Robert L., Jr. "Apprenticeship in the First District: Bob and Alf Taylor’s Early Congressional Races." "Tennessee Historical Quarterly" 28 (Spring 1969): 24-41.