When the 7th Regiment of Foot, the Royal Fusiliers, landed in Quebec in 1773, its ranks included two brothers, Thomas and Nathaniel Taylor. The Englishmen were both serjeants and were the children of a soldier; they'd spent their entire lives, from birth, in the 7th Regiment. Nathaniel, born in 1745 and serving in the grenadier company, may have been the younger of the two, but this is not certain.
When war broke out in Boston in 1775, the soldiers of the 7th Regiment, manning posts along the Richelieu River between Quebec and Lake Champlain, may not have been too concerned. It seemed like a local conflict, far away from them. The fall of Fort Ticonderoga, garrisoned by a detachment of the 26th Regiment, changed that, and the troops of the 7th and 26th prepared their positions at Chambly, Montreal and other key locations for possible attack.
That attack came in the Autumn when American forces surged down the lake and down the river, pushing northward towards Quebec in an attempt to claim Canada. In spite of determined defense, most of the 7th and 26th Regiments were captured piecemeal as each post along the Richelieu was overwhelmed. The prisoners were sent to a barracks in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the first of many who would pass through that town during what became a long war. They may have had some consolation in learning that Quebec did not fall, and a large reinforcement from Great Britain in the spring regained all of the ground that had been lost in the fall.
The prisoners of the 7th Regiment were marched to Lancaster, ennsylvania, and held there for over a year. They were exchanged and joined the British army in New York in 1777. The regiment, after regrouping and recieving some reinforcements to replace men who had deserted or been rendered unfit by the hardships of captivity, participated in the storming of Forts Clinton and Montgomery on the Hudson River in October 1777. They were then sent to Philadelphia to winter with the British army that had just taken that city. On 29 November 1777, Thomas Taylor took the opportunity for advancement that wartime often offered, obtaining the Quartermaster's commission in the 7th Regiment when the previous holder of that position retired.
Of causes that are not known, Thomas Taylor died on 22 September 1781. The 7th Regiment was in the south at that time, having had many of its number captured at the battle of Cowpens in January, and having lost other men in other actions. As Quartermaster, Thomas Taylor may have been at a garrison post when the regiment was fighting. Regardless, he was born, lived and died in the 7th Regiment.
Needing a successor, the officer commanding the 7th Regiment in the field, Lt. Col. Alured Clark, wrote a letter to General Charles, Lord Cornwallis on 5 October offering his recommendation:
I have on my own behalf and that of the regiment to recommend Serjeant Nathaniel Taylor to succeed to the quartermastership vacated by the death of his brother, the success of which I feel much interested in, as he is a very honest, deserving man and greatly attached to the corps from having been born in it.
This request was approved, and Nathaniel Taylor took on his fallen brother's role. He continued in this capacity through the end of the war and beyond, when the regiment returned to Great Britain. By 1788 they were in Edinburgh, and it was here that he caught the eye of a local artist named John Kay. Kay sketched images of many of Edinburgh's personalities in the 1780s and 1790s; his rendering of the corpulent quartermaster of the Royal Fusiliers is a rare image of a man who had served in the British ranks, not as an officer, during the American Revolution. It is difficult to image that he'd had such a rotund physique while on active service in America.
It is fortunate that the artist caught Quartermaster Taylor's likeness when he did. Nathaniel Taylor died on 13 October 1790, only 45 years old, having like his brother spent his entire life in the 7th Regiment of Foot.
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