Collection open for research.
Physical characteristics and conditions affect use of this material. Photocopying from volume not permitted.
Yardley Taylor Surveying Notebook, 1832-1884 (M 036), Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA.
Loudoun County Historical Society, Leesburg, VA
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2004.0001
Elizabeth Preston, 19 January 2012
Yardley Taylor (1794-1863) lived in Goose Creek, now known as Lincoln, an area of Loudoun County populated largely by members of the Society of Friends. Taylor was a prominent Quaker and outspoken abolitionist. He was rumored to have helped several slaves escape Virginia, in violation of fugitive slave laws, and in 1824 served as the first president of the Loudoun Manumission and Emigration Society. His vocal opposition to slavery led one Loudoun County resident to publish a broadside against him, calling him the "chief of the abolitionist clan in Loudoun" and denouncing his anti-slavery actions as "Monstrous!"
Though Taylor worked as a letter carrier and professional horticulturalist, he is best known for his work as a surveyor and mapmaker. In 1853, he published a "Map of Loudoun County, Virginia, from Actual Surveys" and an accompanying Memoir of Loudoun County Virginia. The map identifies landowners, mills, and places of worship in addition to mapping watercourses and roads. Taylor's Memoir describes in great detail the physical features of Loudoun County, the value of its land and products, and comments at length about its population.
In addition to making maps, Taylor used his skills to produce land surveys for individuals. In Virginia, surveyors used the British system of metes and bounds for surveys, or descriptions of property lines based on markers. As he surveyed a parcel, Taylor recorded his measurements and the markers in a notebook; he would use the measurements to produce a completed survey for his client.
This collection consists of one land survey book and a photocopied version of the book. The survey book is bound in leather and measures 8 x 5 x 1.5 inches. It contains surveys from 1832-1882 along with an alphabetical index in the front. The surveys are metes and bounds descriptions and include no plats. Yardley Taylor began using this notebook in 1832. He died in 1863, but there are many surveys recorded in the book after that date. At a sale of his estate in 1870, Bernard Taylor purchased a "surveyor's compass and etc." Although uncertain, it is possible that the purchase included Taylor's surveying notebook and that he was responsible for the later surveys. The notebook was certainly in Bernard Taylor's possession in 1884 when he sold it to Nathan T. Brown. Brown sold copies of the surveys for twenty-five cents, according to a note affixed to the front cover of the notebook.
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Yardley Taylor Map, 1853, Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA;