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Lawyer and judge; dean of the Allen County bar; Mississippi River Commission, 1881–1913
On the record
Robert Stewart Taylor was a son of the Rev. Isaac N. and Margaretta (Stewart) Taylor; his father founded Liber College near Portland, Indiana, where Taylor graduated in the spring of 1858 and married Fanny W. Wright the same day. He read law under Judge Jacob M. Haynes at Portland, removed to Fort Wayne in November 1859, and in November 1860 became a clerk in the office of Judge Lindley M. Ninde. The partnership of Ninde & Taylor followed in 1862, and Colonel Robert S. Robertson joined in 1866. When the criminal court was established at Fort Wayne, Taylor was appointed its first prosecuting attorney, and he was then appointed judge of the court of common pleas. Elected to the Indiana general assembly, he introduced the bill that made Fort Wayne’s street railway system possible. He was the Republican candidate for Congress in 1874 and again in 1880 and was defeated both times. In March 1881 President Garfield appointed him to the Mississippi River Commission, succeeding Benjamin Harrison, and he served through successive appointments until 10 March 1913. From 1883 his practice centered on patent law. His only child, Frank B. Taylor, born 23 November 1860, became a geologist recognized as an authority on the post-glacial geology of the Great Lakes region.
Sources: Griswold, Pictorial History of Fort Wayne, vol. II (1917), Taylor sketch, read first-hand. The career outline is independently confirmed by Leander John Monks, Courts and Lawyers of Indiana, vol. 3, p. 1256, which dates the criminal-court and common-pleas appointments to 1867, a year earlier than Griswold.