TAYLOR, JAMES R. (ca. 1838-1864). James R. Taylor, Confederate soldier, was born about 1838 and attended Larissa College in Cherokee County, Texas. He enlisted in the Confederate Army at Larissa on February 15, 1862, and was elected a captain in the Seventeenth Texas Cavalry. When the regiment was reorganized at Little Rock, Arkansas, on May 22, he was elected colonel. He was captured with most of his regiment at Arkansas Post on January 11, 1863, and was exchanged at City Point, Virginia, in April of that same year. He then returned to the Trans-Mississippi Department, where he collected men from the regiments captured at Arkansas Post to be organized as the Seventeenth Texas Consolidated Dismounted Cavalry. In the fall of 1863 the new regiment was attached to Polignac's Brigade^qv of Texas infantry and served throughout the remainder of the war in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. Taylor was killed while acting as brigade commander at the battle of Mansfield, Louisiana, on April 8, 1864, during the Red River campaign.^qv

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Alwyn Barr, Polignac's Texas Brigade, Texas Gulf Coast Historical Association Publication Series 8.1 (November 1964). Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Marcus J. Wright, comp., and Harold B. Simpson, ed., Texas in the War, 1861-1865 (Hillsboro, Texas: Hill Junior College Press, 1965).