The man who prompted the pioneers to seek incorporation had come from the Orkney Islands to British Columbia with the Royal Engineers. He was not one of them. Trained as a blacksmith and barrel maker in the Old Country, James Taylor had applied these trades while employed at Fort Langley. Upon leaving the company he bought 160 acres west of the fort. In the late 1860s he built, at various times, the Fort Langley Hotel and a blacksmith shop. He trained Indians to do the blacksmith work while he ran the hotel.
He was first married to Catherine Fallardeau, the daughter of Narcisse Fallardeau and sister of Mrs. West, who bore him seven children. When she died in 1874 at the age of 31, he married Barbara Jamieson who may been from Aberdeenshire, Scotland. This union produced no children.
