Researching Henry Taylor

Henry Martyn Taylor was the second son of the Rev. James Taylor and Eliza Johnson. He was educated in Wakefield and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. as 3rd Wrangler in 1865.

He devised a Braille notation when he was overtaken by blindness in 1894, when engaged in the preparation of an edition of Euclid for the Cambridge University Press. By means of his ingenious and well thought out Braille notation he was enabled to transcribe many advanced scientific and mathematical works, and in 1917, with the assistance of Mr. Emblen, a blind member of the staff of the National Institute for the Blind, he perfected it. It was recognised as so comprehensive that it was soon adopted as the standard mathematical and chemical notation, and was universally used by English-speaking people until the adoption of Nemeth Braille in some countries and later Unified English Braille in all English-speaking countries.

He was elected Mayor of Cambridge for 1900–01.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in Jun 1898.

He died in Cambridge and is buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge, with his mother Eliza Taylor, née Johnson.

Taylor, third son of the Rev. John Taylor and Elizabeth (Terry) Taylor, was born in Deerfield, Mass., where his father was then pastor, on February 2, 1796. He graduated from Yale College in 1816. On graduation he went to Ontario County, N. Y., and began the study of law in the office of Spencer Coleman, Esq, of Bloomfield. In November, 1818, he entered the office of the Hon. John C. Spencer, of Canandaigua, in the same county, where he continued for one year, or until admitted to the bar. On January 1, 1820, he opened an office in the village of Canandaigua, and soon won his way to public confidence and to success in his profession. In 1836, and the three succeeding years, he was elected to the New York State Assembly. In 1840 he removed to Marshall, Michigan, to take charge of a large estate there. In 1846 he was a member of the Michigan State Senate, but in 1848 he returned to Canandaigua and resumed the practice of the law. He was appointed by Governor Hamilton Fish, in March 1850, a Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, to fill an unexpired term of nearly two years, being also ex-officio Associate Justice of the New York Court of Appeals. He also held the office of Judge of the County Court from 1856 to 1860. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Yale in 1869. He was a deacon of the Congregational Church in Canandaigua, from 1828 until his death, except during the period of his residence in Michigan. On October 4, 1832, he married Martha C, the eldest daughter of Thomas Masters, a distinguished shipping merchant of New York City, who died in 1884. They had no children. Taylor died in Canandaigua, December 17, 1888, aged nearly 93 years. He was the last survivor of his college class, and the oldest member of the bar in the State of New York.