[4] To pay for his passage, Taylor was indentured to Samuel Savage Jr., who was ironmaster at the French Creek Iron Works in Coventry in Chester County northwest of Philadelphia.

[6] In 1745, under iron master John Potts, Taylor was made manager of the works, which consisted of the furnace and Coventry Forge.

[3] The ironworks, built in 1727, was started by a group of investors who were among Pennsylvania's wealthiest and most influential men, including James Logan, proprietor of the Pennsylvania colony for the Penn family, and William Allen, later the colony's chief justice and founder of Allentown (then called Northampton Town).

[8] Shortly after becoming ironmaster at Durham, Taylor entered public life for the first time, serving as a justice of the peace in Bucks County, Pennsylvania from 1757 to 1763.

Continuing his interest in public affairs, Taylor was commissioned as a justice of the peace in Northampton County and was elected to the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly.

[3] On August 25, with a shipment of 258 round balls weighing from 18 to 32 pounds each, Durham Furnace became the first ironworks in Pennsylvania to supply munitions to the Continental Army.

[1][14] Taylor continued overseeing cannon shot and shells production at Durham Furnace for the Continental Army and Navy.

Not long after independence was achieved, however, Joseph Galloway fled Philadelphia, first seeking refuge with British General William Howe and later escaping to England.

[6] Taylor filed an appeal with the Supreme Executive Council that enabled him to finish the first five years of his lease, but in 1779, the Commissioner of Forfeited Estates sold Durham Furnace to a new owner.

[2] Little is known of Taylor's life before he arrived in Philadelphia in 1736, although there is general agreement that he was born in Northern Ireland (possibly Ulster).

[3] Taylor was buried in St. John's Lutheran Church cemetery across from his residence at Fourth and Ferry Streets in Easton.

Taylor bequeathed £500 to George, his eldest grandchild, and another £500 to Naomi Smith, his housekeeper, "in Consideration of her great Care & Attendance on me for a Number of Years.

Taylor had been experiencing financial difficulties in the last few years of his life, and legal entanglements over the Durham and Greenwich forges dragged on until 1799, at which point his estate was judged insolvent.