Papers (1782-1956, undated) related to the John Gideon Taylor family of Pitt County, North Carolina, including correspondence, legal papers, estate papers, financial papers, post cards, photographs, newspapers, advertising ephemera, genealogy information, Bible records, and miscellany.
John Gideon Taylor (1850-1938) was a native of the Bethel area of Pitt County and spent his entire life in Pitt County. His family moved to Greenville in 1918. He engaged in farming and worked as a builder and sawmill worker. Taylor served as a member of the Pitt County Board of Commissioners and as a member of the Board of Drainage Commissioners of Pitt County Drainage District No. 2. He contributed money to the construction of Highway 11 from Stokes to within six miles of Bethel and to the drainage of Grindle Creek. John Gideon Taylor was buried in the family cemetery in Pitt County. In 1993 his grave site was moved from the family cemetery to Cherry Hill cemetery in Greenville by his grandson William C. Taylor, Jr.
The John Gideon Taylor Family Papers reflect scattered activities of John Gideon Taylor, his ancestors, and his children. Correspondence (1827-1930, undated) comprises approximately half of the collection. Letters of particular interest pertain to the attractiveness of farming in the vicinity of Somerville, Tennessee (1827); the routine interests and activities of William H. Taylor, a soldier in Company E of the 3rd Regiment of N.C. State Troops in Virginia (1862-1863); and the routine interests and activities of the sons of John Gideon Taylor as they served in the American Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War I (1918-1919). Post cards depicting Greenville (1907, 1910, 1912, undated), Washington (1910), Rocky Mount (1911-1913), Farmville (1913), Wilson (1910, 1911), Buies Creek (1908), Raleigh (1908), Asheville (1913), Benson (1913), Salisbury (1912), Elm City (1908), North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee (1911-1912); Conway (1911), St. Matthews (1908), Charleston (1913), and Florence (1910), South Carolina; Birmingham, Alabama (1911); Norfolk (1912-1913), Virginia; Tampa, Florida(1911); Chicago (1908); Washington, D.C. (1917); and the USS UTAH (1917) are contained in the collection.
The collection also contains land grants, land grant abstracts, deeds, court orders, and other legal documents pertaining to land and personal property in Pitt County owned by the Whitley, Whitehurst, Barnhill, Clark, and Taylor families (1782-1936). Included is a contract between the Taylor family and the Greenville firm of Ballard & Ballard for renovations to the Taylor home in Greenville (1925).
Estate papers pertain to the sale of property of John Taylor (1825) and Nehemiah Taylor (1859-1860) and to the estates of other members of the family. Also among these papers is the undated will of Arrity (?) Moore of Pitt County.
The John Gideon Taylor Family Papers also contain financial papers (1831-1925) and a file of miscellaneous material. Included in the latter file are a list of Taylor family births (1740-1791), a typescript obituary of John Gideon Taylor (1935), and unused post cards depicting scenes in North Carolina.
A folder of oversize material contains copies of The Wild Cat (1919), published by the U.S. Army's Eighty-First Division, and copies of the Greenville Daily Reflector (Aug. 19, Nov. 6, 8, 1912).
Gift of Miss Alya Ray Taylor
Gift of Stanley L. Little
Processed by K. Elmore, July 1982
Edited by Jennifer Overstreet, February 2020
Encoded by Apex Data Services
Literary rights to specific documents are retained by the authors or their descendants in accordance with U.S. copyright law.