John James Tayler

John James Tayler (1797–1869) was an English Unitarian minister.

The eldest son of James Tayler (1765–1831) by his wife Elizabeth (1774–1847), daughter of John Venning of Walthamstow, he was born at 12, Church Row, Newington Butts,in Surrey, on 15 August 1797. His father, was Unitarian minister successively at Walthamstow, Southwark, and Nottingham; and made him a Latinist. Tayler's father, following the death of his father, Richard Tayler (†1784), himself a non-conformist minister, was adopted by Andrew Kippis (1725–1795),editor of the Biographia Britannica (1778) who assumed the role of guardian and tutor and helped him about 1788 enter New College at Hackney (where, Kippis was appointed one of the tutors, together with Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, and Gilbert Wakefield) Tayler wrote in his obituary of his father, that "domestic occurrences" had prevented him from completing his course at Hackney and he continued his studies in private, under the direction of Dr. Kippis. "At the recommendation of Kippis he officiated at Nottingham, as a supply, for several months, in 1793 or 1794; after which he preached for some time at Walthamstow, where in 1795, he married Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. John Venning, of that place. In the beginning of 1797, he succeeded the Rev. Thomas Jervis, as sole minister of St. Thomas's Meeting-house, Southwark." At Hackney his classical tutor was Gilbert Wakefield (1756–1801), and Tayler attributed his father's "exact and solid knowledge" of the Greek and Latin languages to Wakefield's influence. Tayler's father also "took a lively interest in the discoveries of natural philosophy; and works on chemistry and physiology". In 1802 his father moved to Nottingham as one of the Ministers of the High Pavement Chapel a post he held until 1831. In the spring of 1808 his father started a school situated in his own home. Tayler refers to "the expenses of a large and increasing family" as the main reason for doing so- Tayler had two brothers, Andrew and William and three sisters Emily, Elizabeth and Clara. It was this first schooling that had a profound effect on him, and it was his father's pronounced "philological habits" that "led to a scrupulous and anxious habit of mind in matters of minute accuracy" that made a deep and lasting impression on the young Tayler who was closely taught by his father.

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