George Taylor
Easton, Northampton County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
One of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, member of Continental Congress, ironmaster, lived in this house built in 1757 by William Parsons, Surveyor-General. First occupied by Parsons.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
This handsome stone house was built in 1757 by William Parsons, the Surveyor-General who laid out Easton, and first served as his own home. It later belonged to George Taylor, an ironmaster and member of the Continental Congress who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Taylor's forges helped supply the Revolution with the iron of war, and his signature bound him to the boldest gamble of the founding generation.
Why it matters
The home of a Declaration signer, it links a Pennsylvania ironmaster's furnaces to the fight for independence and preserves the memory of one of the ordinary-turned-extraordinary men who pledged their lives to the American cause.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the 1750s, the frontier town at the Forks of the Delaware was taking shape as an ordered settlement, its streets laid out by surveyors working for the colony's proprietors. It was a place where the wilderness was being turned, deliberately, into a town — and the men who did that surveying were figures of real local importance.
One of them built this stone house in 1757. Sturdy stone construction was a statement on the frontier, a sign of permanence in a place still being carved out of the countryside. The town it anchored would, within two decades, find itself caught up in the Revolution.
Those were years when a colony's iron, its skilled men, and its willingness to risk everything all mattered enormously. The house would come to be associated with a man who supplied one of those things and staked the others on independence.
People & events
The house was built in 1757 by William Parsons, the Surveyor-General who helped lay out the town, and he was its first occupant. That a man in his position built here underscores how central this place was to the young settlement's founding.
Later the house belonged to George Taylor, an ironmaster who rose to serve in the Continental Congress and who signed the Declaration of Independence. Taylor's life joined two very different worlds — the heat and labor of the forge, and the high-stakes politics of a colonies-turned-nation.
As an ironmaster, Taylor knew the industry that a war demands. As a signer, he put his name to the boldest gamble of his generation, binding himself personally to a cause that could have cost him everything. The house links those two roles in one address: the practical work of making iron and the perilous work of making a country.
Its place in the American story
The men who signed the Declaration of Independence were not a class of professional revolutionaries. They were merchants, farmers, lawyers, and — in this case — an ironmaster, ordinary Americans who became extraordinary by the risk they accepted.
That matters to the national story. The Revolution succeeded not because of a handful of famous names but because people across many trades committed their fortunes and their lives to it. An ironmaster's signature is a reminder that industry and enterprise stood behind the fight, not just oratory.
Iron was, quite literally, a material of the Revolution — needed for tools, hardware, and the implements of war. A signer who was also an ironmaster ties the local furnaces and forges of Pennsylvania to the founding struggle, joining what a region could make to what a nation dared to declare.
If you visit
Take a moment with the stonework and the date. A house built in 1757 has stood through the entire life of the United States, and its solidity still speaks of the confidence of the men who raised and lived in it.
As you look, hold two people in mind: the surveyor who laid out the town and first lived here, and the ironmaster and signer who followed him. One shaped the streets around you; the other put his name to the document that changed everything.
If you are following the trail of the Declaration's signers, this stop grounds that grand story in a single, tangible home. It is a reminder that the founders lived in real houses on real streets — and that one of them pledged his life to independence and then went home to a place like this.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · George Taylor
- · William Parsons
Related events
- · Signing of the Declaration of Independence
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Durham Furnace
Durham Township, PA · est. 1947
Built in 1727, Durham Furnace was one of colonial Pennsylvania's early ironworks, smelting local ore into iron through more than six decades of blast until 1789. In the colonial wars and again during the Revolution it cast cannon and shot for the fight, turning frontier iron into weapons of war. Among its owners were the prominent colonial statesman James Logan and George Taylor, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Brethren's House
Bethlehem, PA · est. 1964
The Moravians who founded Bethlehem built this stone house in 1748 to lodge their unmarried men, and it quickly became a hive of colonial-era craft — a bell foundry, silkworm raising, and other trades that made the community largely self-sufficient. During the Revolution it sheltered wounded Continental soldiers as a military hospital, and after 1815 it opened as a girls' school before becoming part of Moravian College and a museum.
George Taylor (1716-1781)
Catasauqua, PA · est. 1947
George Taylor, an Irish-born ironmaster who rose from indentured labor to prosperity, made his home in this handsome 1768 house along the Lehigh. Elected to Pennsylvania's provincial Assembly in 1764, he stood against royal government and was sent to the Continental Congress in July 1776, where he added his name to the Declaration of Independence. His restored home is today a National Historic Landmark.
Allentown
Whitehall, PA · est. 1947
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