TAYLOR, JAMES (ca. 1814-1836). James Taylor, Alamo defender, son of Anson and Elizabeth (Maley) Taylor, was born in Tennessee around 1814. He was the brother of Alamo defenders Edward and George Taylor.^qv At the outbreak of the Texas Revolution^qv he and his brothers were employed to pick cotton for a Captain Dorsett on his farm in Liberty, Texas. Upon finishing the job they left to join the revolutionary army.^qv It is believed that they died in the battle of the Alamo^qv on March 6, 1836, though some evidence suggests that Taylor and his brothers were victims of the Goliad Massacre^qv rather than the Alamo battle. Their names were carried on a list of the Alamo casualties a week before the Goliad executions occurred.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Daughters of the American Revolution, The Alamo Heroes and Their Revolutionary Ancestors (San Antonio, 1976). William Fairfax Gray, From Virginia to Texas, 1835 (Houston: Fletcher Young, 1909, 1965). Bill Groneman, Alamo Defenders (Austin: Eakin, 1990). Thomas R. Lindley, "Davy Crockett: The Alamo's High Private," Alamo Journal 64 (December 1988). Andrew Jackson Sowell, Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas (Austin: Ben C. Jones, 1900; rpt., Austin: State House Press, 1986).

Bill Groneman