HistoricSiteMarkers
American RevolutionColonial America

George Taylor (1716-1781)

Catasauqua, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania

Marker Inscription

Signer, Declaration of Independence, lived here. Delegate to Continental Congress, appointed July 1776. In the provincial Assembly (elected 1764) he opposed a royal government. An ironmaster. House built 1768; a National Historic Landmark.

Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

The Story

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.

Why it matters

As one of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration, Taylor embodies the immigrant tradesmen and manufacturers who staked their livelihoods on American independence.

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Related people

  • Β· George Taylor

Related events

  • Β· Signing of the Declaration of Independence, 1776

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

Allentown

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Laid out in 1762 by the powerful colonial jurist William Allen, this Lehigh Valley town spent its first seventy years known as Northampton before taking its founder's name. In the anxious autumn of 1777, as the British occupied Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell was spirited here for safekeeping and Revolutionary wounded were nursed in the town. It grew through the 19th century into a humming center of textiles and cement, earning its city charter in 1867.

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William Allen, a leading colonial jurist, established this settlement in 1762; it answered to the name Northampton until 1834. In 1777 it sheltered the Liberty Bell from advancing British forces and hosted Revolutionary wounded. Incorporated as a city in 1867, it flourished as a center of textiles and cement manufacture.

Allentown

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Founded in 1762 by the colonial leader and jurist William Allen, this town went by the name Northampton until 1834. During the Revolution its distance from the Delaware made it a safe haven β€” the Liberty Bell was hidden here in 1777 and wounded Continental soldiers were treated nearby. Chartered as a city in 1867, it became a long-lived hub of textile mills and cement works.

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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 β€” 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.