“William Taylor

Bishop of Africa

“The People Who Sat In Darkness Saw Great Light”

This also marks the grave of Isabella Taylor, with the epitaph, “Her children shall rise up and call her blessed.”

There is an additional plaque on the ground next to the monument on which the epitaphs are affixed. It states, “Bishop William Taylor was one of the first Methodist missionaries to reach California, where he ministered to the miners, Native Americans and sailors. He later traveled the globe supporting himself by writing books and sharing Christ wherever he went. His life of faith was so closely aligned with the mission of Fort Wayne College in Indiana that in 1890, the trustees of the school, agreed to rename the institution Taylor University. To this day, the institution, with campuses in Upland and Fort Wayne, Indiana, continues to prepare men and women to follow in the footsteps of its namesake, ministering the love of Christ to a world in need. This plaque was given in 2000, compliments of the class of 1950.”

William Taylor lived from 1821 from 1902. He was born in Virginia, the descendent of immigrants who fought in the Revolutionary War and were forward-thinking enough to free their slaves after the war. At the age of 10, he had a spiritual moment in front of the wood stove, decided to devote his life to Christianity, and eventually became a Methodist Deacon. He was a California pioneer, traveling to San Francisco in 1849. He preached to the 49ers in the tent city of San Francisco, often by standing up on a whiskey barrel and using his sonorous voice to its best advantage. He also frequented saloons and brothels, ostensibly to preach the Word and not to partake in their services. He set up San Francisco’s first Methodist Church, presumably in something other than a tent. 

Apparently, Taylor was quite a fit physical specimen, all of six feet tall and 207 pounds, and capable, when he was nearly 60 years old, of lifting 760 pounds in one go (using what matter of lift, and what manner of weight, I do not know). He was, at one point in his younger years, in a bit of a hurry; there being no ferries available at the time, he swam across the San Francisco Bay to Alameda and ostensibly arrived on time. 

He took advantage of his robustness by traveling the world as a missionary for 40 years, starting in 1856 in the western parts of the U.S. and Canada. From there he went to England, Ireland, “Asia Minor” (Turkey, Georgia, Armenia), Syria, and Palestine. He spent much of his time in South Africa, and was elected as Missionary Bishop of Africa in 1884 (a Missionary Bishop is one who is assigned to work in an area that is not already organized under a bishop of the church; he has approximately equal footing in the church as a regular bishop, but is still a separate breed of clergyman). He later preached in Barbados, British Guinea (now incorporated into Papua New Guinea, though his obituary claims this was in South America), Australia, and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Not to rest on his laurels, he then traveled to India as a missionary, and then made a quick, 1500 mile jaunt up the Amazon. He preached in Peru and Chile and, after becoming Bishop of Africa, did work in central and western Africa until he retired back to California at the age of 77.

Missionary work, especially in the 1800s, has been historically fraught with ethnocentrism and colonialism. Bishop Taylor may have been guilty of some of this (he consorted with King Leopold of Belgium, for example, and consulted with him regarding the colonialization of Congo; he was also, as a man of his time, guilty of referring to “natives” and “Kaffirs” and the “Dark Continent;” not to mention his zeal in carrying out the basic goals of Christian evangelism, which seeks to replace cultural values with “superior” Christian ones), but his heart seems to truly have been in the right place. He built many houses and dug many wells, started a university or two, and wrote several books, all while traveling essentially self-supported. 

The cross atop Priest Alexander Allen’s grave. The symbol on the cross is a Chi Rho, which has several different forms but is always essentially formed by the Greek letters Chi (which looks like an X) and Rho (which looks like a P). Chi and Rho are the first letters in the Greek name for Christ, XPICTOC, and thus this symbol is a way of reinforcing the cross shown here. The N woven into the Chi Rho stands for the Greek word, “Nike,” which means “victory” and usually refers to the Greek Goddess of that name; it is interesting that the referral to the Greek pantheistic system using this symbology is not an uncommon practice in Catholicism. 

A newly finished mausoleum, awaiting the dead.

Not sleep Eternal but Living Fellowship.

On the gravestone of Priest Alexander Allen, 1858-1932. The back of the gravestone also lists the name of Helen Windsor Allen, 1887-1952. 

And they were all aligned. 

Looking closely, one can see Sutro Tower across the Bay in San Francisco - it’s just to the right of the large palm.