Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

Collection open for research.

Use Restrictions

Physical characteristics and conditions affect use of this material. Photocopying from volume not permitted.

Preferred Citation

Yardley Taylor Surveying Notebook, 1832-1884 (M 036), Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA.

Acquisition Information

Loudoun County Historical Society, Leesburg, VA

Alternative Form Available

None

Accruals

2004.0001

Processing Information

Elizabeth Preston, 19 January 2012

Historical Information

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.

Scope and Content

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.

Arrangement

Folder

Related Material

Yardley Taylor Map, 1853, Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA; Memoir of Loudoun County, Virginia. To Accompany the Map of Loudoun County , by Yardley Taylor, Leesburg, VA: T. Reynolds, 1853 (V REF 975.528 TAY)

Adjunct Descriptive Data

Bibliography

Account of the Sale of Yardley Taylor's Estate, Loudoun County Will Book 2V, page 125.

Ancestry Library Edition. US Census. www.ancestrylibrary.com (accessed 6 January, 2012).

Chamberlin, Taylor and John M. Souders. Between Reb and Yank: A Civil War History of Northern Loudoun County, Virginia . Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2011.

Linklater, Andro. Measuring America: How the United States was Shaped by the Greatest Land Sale in History. New York: Penguin Group, 2002.

Poland, Charles P. From Frontier to Suburbia: Loudoun County, Virginia: One of America's Fastest Growing Counties . Westminster: MD: Heritage Books, 2005.

Taylor Family Papers, 1817-1872 (SC 0097), Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA.

Taylor Family Tree, 1851 (OM 16), Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA.

Taylor, Yardley. Memoir of Loudoun County, Virginia. To Accompany the Map of Loudoun County . Leesburg, VA: T. Reynolds, 1853.

Yardley Taylor Surveying Notebook, 1834-1884 (M 036), Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA.

Other Finding Aid

None

Technical Requirements

None