Family:Edward Taylor and Frances Holt (1)

Edward Payson Taylor married Frances Pearce Holt when they were both 24 years old. They lived most of their married life on Ryerson Street (later Cambridge Place), in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, where Frances' parents, Charles Holt and Jane Pearce, lived. Edward shared a love of music with his father-in-law, who ran a music store and sang in a chorus.

They, along with the Holts, were leading members of the Central Congregational Church, which was established nearby in 1854. Edward as well as his father-in-law Charles Holt both served as Superintendents of the Sunday School. Edward and Frances named their second son Clement French, after the Rev. J. Clement French, who was pastor of their church from 1857 to 1870.

Professionally, Edward worked in the furniture business, eventually becoming a partner in the upholstery firm T. Brooks and Co. in Brooklyn.

The Taylors had four sons and a daughter between 1852 and 1866. Their daughter died in 1859, just before her fifth birthday, and just months after their second son was born. Their sons all lived into adulthood, married, and had children.

In 1875, after suffering a depression for a year, Edward shot himself in the head, ending his own life at age 48. His depression was not attributed to any cause, as by all accounts he was happy and successful in his family, his business, and his community. It may have been a hereditary condition, as his eldest son Edward would later commit suicide too.

The family lived at 86 Cambridge Place as late as 1879, but by the 1880 US Census, they are living on 168 Putnam Ave, closer to the church. Edward Pierce Taylor is the head of the household, age 28, with his wife Kate and two young daughters, brothers Clement (21), Charles (19), and Frank (14), and their widowed mother Frances, then 53 years old.

Frances would later live with her son Charles and his family in Maplewood, New Jersey, where she died in 1911 at nearly 84 years.

Here is a map of Taylor and Holt places in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Click on icons for info.

Larger map

1860 US census, Taylor family

1880 US census, Taylor family

1866 Frank birth cert

This house at 86 Cambridge Place (c2005) may be the same house that the Taylor family lived in in the 1870s.

1. ↑ IGI, records submitted to LDS.

   see IGI pedigree (needs primary source)

2. ↑ Brooklyn, Kings, New York, United States. Brooklyn Daily Eagle. (Brooklyn, Kings, New York, United States)
   p. 2, 11 July 1851.

   "MARRIED In this city, on the 7th instant, by the Rev. S.I. Prime, Edward P. Taylor to Frances P., daughter of Charles Holt, Jr." (online archive available at Brooklyn Public Library)

3. ↑ Dwight, Benjamin Woodbridge. The History of the Descendants of John Dwight, of Dedham, Mass. (John F. Trow & Son, 1874)
   p. 471.

   at 2623, indicates Edward Payson Taylor m. July 7, 1851, Frances Pearce Holt, dau. of Charles Holt and Jane Pearce.