Roger Sherman Chapter NSDAR, inc. New Milford, Connecticut
Reverend Nathaniel Taylor
Born 1722 Died 1800 ~~ Buried At Center Cemetery
Reverend Nathaniel Taylor was the son of Daniel Taylor. He was born in Danbury, Connecticut on August 27th, 1722.
Rev. Taylor graduated from Yale College in 1745, after which he taught in Hampshire County, Massachusetts. Taylor started preaching in New Milford at the Congregational Church in January 1748, and he was ordained pastor of the church on the 29th of June the following year and continued as a pastor there until his death over 50 years later.
He married Tamar Boardman on February 23, 1749. Tamar was the daughter of the Reverand Daniel Boardman and his second wife Jerusha Seelye. She was born on March 26, 1723. The Rev. Boardman was ordained the first pastor of the Church of Christ in New Milford.
The Reverend was a strong supporter of the colonies. In 1759, during the French and Indian War, he served as chaplain to a regiment of Connecticut troops under the command of Col. Nathan Whiting in Ticonderoga and Crown Point, New York.
Taylor was a passionate advocate of the American Revolution. One of the ways in which he showed this was to return an entire year’s salary to the church.. This fact the parish records show under his hand bearing the date of April 1779. After the establishment of the General Government he was equally zealous to promote a spirit of due subordination and quiet submission to the laws, being a Federalist.
Before and after the war he taught Greek and Latin to youth preparing to enter college. His school became so popular that in the Yale class of 1762 eight to ten had been his pupils. Taylor was a member of the Board of Trustees of Yale College from 1774 until his death in 1800, a period of more than twenty-six years.
After having been for forty-one years the only pastor in New Milford, Taylor requested that the parish would give him a colleague. After this he rarely preached in New Milford, though he occasionally supplied the pulpits in the neighboring towns for a considerable time.
Tamar and Nathaniel were parents to 6 children. Their son Nathaniel would go on to play a role in the Revolutionary War. Tamar died on June 27, 1795 at the age of 72. The Reverand then married a second time to Zipporah (Strong )Bennett. Taylor’s last illness was a long and tedious one. He died Dec. 9th, 1800 in the seventy-ninth year of his age, and the fifty-third of his ministry.
The colonial house that stands next to the New Milford Congregational Church (#34 Main Street) was built by the Reverend for his oldest son in the year 1774. Colonel Nathaniel Taylor was known to have entertained both Lt. Gen. Marquis de Lafayette and Gen. Jean-Baptiste de Rochambeau, commanders of the French troops that fought alongside the continental army against the British
