His grandfather set up the colliery around which the village of Tylorstown grew in the Rhondda Valley, Wales.
Although he was interested in science, the early death of his father compelled him to devote himself to his business, which he entered in his sixteenth year.
He frequently visited the continent, going to Italy, Spain, and Russia, both for business and for scientific purposes with other geologists.
In 1850 he married Isabella Harris of Stoke Newington, who survived him with two sons and four daughters;[2] their eldest child was Joseph John Tylor, the engineer and Egyptologist.
Tylor paid attention to recent geological history, the subject of the majority of his thirteen papers.