Taylor, Bride Neill, 1858-1937

Bride Neill Taylor (1858-1937), author, teacher, and community leader, moved to Austin from Peoria, Illinois, in 1871. She graduated from Nazareth Academy in Kentucky in 1876. Shortly after her marriage to Thomas Frederick Taylor, a civil servant, in 1880, she accompanied him to Washington, D.C., where she worked as a journalist for the Washington Sun Capitol . She became the Washington correspondent for the Austin Statesman when she sent news of President James A. Garfield’s assassination in 1881. In 1883, Taylor returned to Texas, earned her teaching credentials from the University of Texas at Austin, and taught in Austin public schools while continuing her writing career. She is best known for a biography of her friend Elisabet Ney, one of the first professional sculptors in Texas. Most of her newspaper articles were unattributed.

Taylor was a devout Catholic and avid club organizer, helping to establish numerous chapels, mission churches, societies, and associations in Austin. She had a major role in the founding of the Texas Fine Arts Association, the Austin History Club, and the Austin Women’s Club. Additionally, she was one of only three women attendees at the meeting of the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) in 1897. She served on the TSHA’s executive council starting in 1928, and published an article about the association’s inception in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 1929. Furthermore, Taylor earned the distinction of being only the second woman to be declared Austin’s Most Worthy Citizen, 1930.

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