I’ve been fortunate to continue to find all sorts of interesting items in old newspapers related to the Taylor family of Dover, NJ.
The first is this advertisement for Alfred Taylor’s harness shop. I love the “As Good As The Best and Cheap As The Cheapest” headline.
The second is for Taylor Brothers, “Dover’s Popular Clothiers”. I know that Taylor Brothers was owned by two of Alfred Taylor’s sons, John and unknown. I hope to determine which brother was the second involved in this venture soon!
As I continue to try and learn more about the children of Frederick and Mary (Felver) Taylor of Dover, New Jersey, I’ve been trying various google search combinations to try to churn up more information about the children: Edna Marguerite, Maud, Clarence, Helen, and Joseph.
Descendants of one of these children may be the only other source of clarity on the Felver family origins. My dream is to find a living descendent that has a family bible. How wonderful would that be.
I did discover that the Taylor kids show up in local news under the very cute school reports detailing “class leaders” and “present every day” students.
Here you’ll see Marguerite and Maud who are both in the 7th grade but in different classes. I always thought they were born in two different years, but now I wonder if they could have been twins.
Clarence is a bit farther down the page in the 5th grade while Helen is in the 3rd grade.
The youngest, Joseph, was three years younger than Helen and wouldn’t have been in grammar school.
While this kind of school report doesn’t provide hard data, it does provide details of the lives of the Taylor children. Marguerite, Maud, Clarence, and Helen were present every day – imagine that! And two out of four were cited as class leaders.
Clearly, education was important in the Taylor family.
I’m beginning to think the best way for me to uncover a new piece of information is to write about the various dead ends and brick walls on this site. Yesterday I wrote about the Taylor sisters and the fact that two of them seemed to drop out of site after 1920.
It struck me that Edna Marguerite Taylor is buried with her parents at Locust Hill Cemetery in Dover, NJ, but that neither Helen nor Maud are there—at least not in the same plot. I went to findagrave.com and found a Helen Taylor Keats buried with her husband Wilfred Keats.
A bit of googling for Helen and Wilfred Keats, found this small, but eye-opening gem from the historic Rockaway Record:
I’m not sure when Helen and Wilfred married, when they moved to Pennsylvania, or when they moved back to New Jersey (Wilfred was apparently mayor of nearby Wharton Township, NJ for a time), but now I know that Helen didn’t just disappear.
Now if I could learn more about their son, La Vern…
Edna Marguerite and Maud Taylor
Frederick Taylor and his wife Mary Felver had five children: Edna Marguerite (1889-1963), Maud (1890-?), Clarence (1893-1972), Helen (1895-?), and Joseph (1898-?). I’ve been fascinated by this side of the family because it’s clear the daughters, especially Edna Marguerite, were close to my great-grandparents.
I have a number of photos of Edna with my great-grandparents as young adults. They clearly “hung out” together and seemed to be fairly close cousins.
As far as I can tell so far, none of the three daughters married. In 1920, the 30 year old Edna Marguerite and 24 year old Helen were still living at home with their parents. Maud either died between 1911 (when the above photo was was taken) and 1920 or she married or I simple can’t find a trace of her.
In 1930, Edna Marguerite is the only Taylor child living at home with mom and dad (who are now well into their 60s). By this point, Helen either died, married, or “got lost”.
Edna Marguerite is still alive and living with her parents in 1940. It doesn’t seem unusual, with three daughters in the family, that one would stay at home to take care of the parents, keep house, etc., but I do know that Edna worked for the post office (like her father) for many years.
What became of Maud and Helen? Did they remain unmarried, but simply weren’t living at home?
Out Here Studying Stones 