Businessman, land speculator, town promoter, and political agent. A younger son of James Taylor, Sr. and Ann Hubbard, of 'Midway', Caroline County, Virginia, James arrived in Kentucky in 1792 to develop and sell the large tract of land at the mouth of the Licking River that his father purchased from George Muse, who had been awarded the land for his service in the French and Indian War. Most of what comprises modern-day Bellevue, Covington, Dayton, and Newport was included in the original tract. Beginning in 1792 Taylor laid out the town of Newport, and in 1793 marked the trail that has become U.S. 27 to Lexington. In 1795 he married the widow of Maj. David Leitch, an early pioneer of Campbell County. In 1798 he donated land for the establishment of the Newport Academy, and a two-acre tract for the construction of a courthouse and jail on Fourth Street, between Columbia and York Streets. With assistance solicited from his cousin President James Madison in 1803, Taylor persuaded the federal government to move the Fort Washington military post from Cincinnati to Northern Kentucky. As an inducement he donated five acres at the mouth of the Licking River on which to build a facility, and in return the government rewarded Taylor with a contract to construct what would become the Newport Barracks. During the War of 1812 he held the rank of Brigadier General and was captured by the British in the Detroit Campaign but was soon paroled. Other business interests of Taylor included operating ferries across both the Licking and the Ohio Rivers, founding the Newport Bank, investing in the Newport Manufacturing Company, operating sawmills and gristmills along the Licking River, as well as owning both a saltworks and a tanning business. He quickly replaced his original log cabin residence built in the 1790s with a frame house which was destroyed in 1837 in a fire set by a disgruntled slave. The brick mansion which was his residence in later years is still standing at 335 East Third Street, approximately two blocks east of Newport on the Levee.
