1. William Tailer was a military officer and politician in the Province of Massachusetts Bay.
31 Facts About William Tailer
1. 2.
William Tailer served as lieutenant governor of the province from 1711 until 1716, and again in the early 1730s.
3.
William Tailer was a political opponent of Governor Joseph Dudley, and was a supporter of a land bank proposal intended to address the province's currency problems.
4.
William Tailer was active in the provincial defense, and commanded a regiment in the 1710 siege of Port Royal, the capital of French Acadia, during Queen Anne's War.
5.
William Tailer was responsible for overseeing the defenses of Boston in the 1720s, and was sent to negotiate with the Iroquois and Abenaki during Dummer's War.
6.
William Tailer's mother was the daughter of early Massachusetts settler Israel Stoughton and sister to magistrate William Stoughton.
7.
William Tailer's father owned commercial real estate in Boston and was a member of the Atherton Company, one of New England's most powerful and well-connected land development partnerships.
8.
William Tailer was one of "a selected fraternity" of merchants engaged in the "eastward trade" with neighboring French Acadia, one of whose leading members was Boston merchant John Nelson.
9.
The younger William Tailer inherited a substantial estate; it was reported that in 1695 his guardians operated five mills on his behalf.
10.
William Tailer was a beneficiary of the large estate of his uncle, who died a childless bachelor.
11.
Byfield and William Tailer's father had been business partners, a relationship that William Tailer continued.
12.
William Tailer served in the provincial militia during Queen Anne's War.
13.
William Tailer's expectations were rewarded with a commission as lieutenant governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, serving under Governor Joseph Dudley.
14.
William Tailer then returned to Massachusetts, where he was again active in the defense of the colonies, serving at Fort William and Mary in New Hampshire, and reporting on the frontier defenses in what is southern Maine.
15.
William Tailer joined the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in 1712 and was elected as its captain the same year.
16.
William Tailer was elected to the Governor's Council from 1712 to 1729, and was on three separate occasions commissioned as lieutenant governor of Massachusetts.
17.
William Tailer was unsuccessful in acquiring the governorship, but was able to convince Colonel Elizeus Burges, who had been chosen to replace Dudley, to keep Tailer on as lieutenant governor.
18.
Immediately after taking office William Tailer engaged in political housecleaning, eliminating land bank opponents and Dudley supporters from a number of provincial positions.
19.
William Tailer's efforts backfired: the provincial assembly elected Joseph Dudley's son Paul as attorney general, and London agents of the anti-bank party worked to ensure Tailer's replacement.
20.
Nelson sought recompense for the loss of the territory in the 1667 Treaty of Breda, but William Tailer's efforts were in vain.
21.
William Tailer lobbied on his own behalf for a military pension.
22.
William Tailer accompanied Shute on an expedition to Maine to negotiate with the Abenaki of northern New England in 1717.
23.
In 1720 William Tailer was one of several commissioners sent to mediate between the settlers and Abenaki.
24.
William Tailer was one of the lead members of a party sent in 1723 to Albany, New York in an attempt to convince the Iroquois to join the conflict against the Abenaki.
25.
William Tailer continued to be involved in the war, where he was responsible for maintaining Boston's defenses.
26.
William Tailer's politics shifted during the 1720s, and he and Byfield came to align more closely with the populist faction.
27.
When Governor William Tailer Burnet died in 1729, Belcher was in London, acting as agent for Connecticut and assisting in lobbying against Burnet's unpopular insistence on a permanent salary.
28.
William Tailer's commission was proclaimed before Belcher's arrival, and he briefly served as acting governor while awaiting his superior's arrival.
29.
The few months were uneventful, as the province was then suffering from an outbreak of smallpox, because of which William Tailer prorogued the assembly.
30.
William Tailer's pallbearers included Governor Belcher and other leading political figures.
31.
William Tailer is buried in the tomb of his uncle, Willam Stoughton, in what is called the Dorchester North Burying Ground.