Walter Taylor Esq. (abt. 1725 - 1799)

Born about 1725 in Raheen, County Galway, Ireland

Descendants

Biography

Walter Taylor is estimated to have been born about 1725, based on the date of his second marriage and a monument erected in Ardrahan Church ruins. He lived at Castle Taylor, County Galway, Ireland.

General Sir John Taylor, the heir and proprietor of Castle Taylor, was his son (or brother?).

Walter Taylor married his second wife Hester Power Trench, daughter of Richard Trench and Frances Power, in 1753. His brother in law was the Earl of Clancarty.

Children of Walter Taylor and Hester Power Trench

• Anne Taylor d. 15 Aug 1844

* John Taylor KCB

A combination of Burke's Peerage and the memoirs of the 2nd Earl of Clancarty suggests he had three other daughters. His son John was knighted for his military service.

He died in 1799.

Walter Taylor was granted almost a thousand acres in the barony of Kiltartan, county Galway in February 1667.

In 1778 the Taylors also had a property at Raheen, closer to Gort.

Following a marriage in 1825 it became the Shawe-Taylor estate and included lands in the parish of Kilmacduagh, barony of Kiltartan, county Galway in 1855. The Shawe-Taylors also held extensive property in the barony of Dunkellin. Sir John Taylor, of Castle Taylor, is recorded as the proprietor of lands in the parish of Beagh, barony of Kiltartan, and the parish of Kilcolgan in the 1830s. The Ordnance Survey Name Books record their agent as George Cuppage of Galway. The main house on the estate was at Castle Taylor, formerly Ballymagrath, close to the village of Ardrahan but they also held another house in the townland of Monksfield, between Ardrahan and Craughwell. This had been acquired from the Morgan family. In 1906 Walter Shawe Taylor held over 400 acres of untenanted demesne land at Castletaylor South as well as a further 1100 acres of untenanted land in the parishes of Killinny and Kilmacduagh. The Shawe-Taylor estate was sold to the Land Commission in the 1930s by Michael Shawe-Taylor who was the last of the family to live there.

On the south wall of the chancel in a now ruinous late-medieval church in Ardrahan, County Galway can be found a monument to the Taylor family who for many centuries lived nearby in Castle Taylor, a house abandoned in the 1930s and now just a shell.^[1] The inscription reads: ‘This monument was erected by Capt. John Taylor and Walter Taylor Esq. for them and their posterities, 1747.’

Research notes

The following contemporaries were probably brothers:

• Walter Taylor (abt. 1728-1799); and
• Thomas Taylor (abt. 1735-abt. 1817).

Both were of Castle Taylor according to Burke's Irish Family Records (1976):

• the former appears in the Shawe-Taylor entry (p. 1098) as "Walter Taylor, of Castle Taylor," the only reported child of John Taylor and his wife Anne née Taylor; and
• the latter appears in the Blakeney entry (p. 127) as "Mary [Blakeney], m 19 June 1759, Thomas Taylor, of Castle Taylor, co Galway (see SHAWE-TAYLOR)".

The cross-reference between the two entries fails to explain the relationship.

Both had sons named John, who would then be first cousins:

• Walter's son became General Sir John Taylor (1771-1843), of Castle Taylor; and
• Thomas's son John Taylor Esquire died in 1810, and his widow mentioned the general in an 1825 petition for compensation.

When Walter Taylor of Mulpit married in 1853

• his marriage certificate described him as son of "John Taylor Esquire"; but
• a newspaper report described him as "nephew of the late General Sir John Taylor, of Castle Taylor".

He could not be both, unless either his mother was also a Taylor, not a Lopdell, or there were two brothers named John Taylor in the same family.

The most likely explanation is that "nephew" should read "first cousin once removed", and that the general had taken a special interest in his first cousin's fatherless children.

Sources

1. ↑ For more information about Castle Taylor, see https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/30410411/castle-taylor-castletaylor-south-galway

See also:

• https://www.thepeerage.com/p4867.htm#i48668

• http://landedestates.ie/family/854

• https://theirishaesthete.com/2022/06/08/for-them-and-their-posterities/