Bayard Taylor was born on January 11, 1825, in Chester County, Pennsylvania, to Joseph and Rebecca Taylor. His parents were Quakers, and his father earned a living as a farmer. He attended school in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and at the age of 17, he began an apprenticeship with a local printer. He published a volume of poetry in 1844 and used the profits to spend two years travelling through Europe. In 1846, he published an account of his journey in Views Afoot, or Europe seen with Knapsack and Staff. In response to his growing fame, newspaper editor Horace Greeley hired him to travel to California and report on the ongoing gold rush.

 

He married Mary Agnew in 1849, but she died of tuberculosis the following year. He spent the early 1850s in Egypt, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean, and he ascended partway up the Nile River. He then travelled to India and China before joining Commodore Matthew Perry’s voyage to Japan. He published three more travel books in the mid-1850s: A Journey to Central Africa (1854), The Lands of the Saracen (1854), and A Visit to India, China and Japan in the Year 1853 (1855).

 

He returned to America in December 1853 and delivered public lectures across the country. He then spent the mid-1850s in northern Europe. In October 1857, he married Maria Hansen, the daughter of a Danish astronomer. They spent their honeymoon in Greece before returning to America.

 

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln appointed him secretary of legation for St. Petersburg, Russia. Then, in 1866, he travelled to Colorado and explored the Rocky Mountains. He visited Iceland in 1874 and spoke at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1876. In early 1878, he received an appointment as minister to Prussia. He died in Berlin on December 19, 1878.

 

Image: Bayard Taylor (courtesy Wikicommons)

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