More specific data regarding the 'Taylors' are not provided within any of the Ury House accounts referenced thus far. Some Taylors are known to have lived in the area during the eighteenth century, however.
Jacob Taylor was Surveyor General of Pennsylvania 30 August 1725 to 8 August 1737.
Before becoming Surveyor General, Jacob Taylor was a school teacher near Abington.
"When Astrological science was much countenanced, Jacob Taylor, a good mathematician, who from keeping a small school near Abington, came to be the Surveyor General of the province, calculated the aspect of the planets when the city of Philadelphia was founded, and expressed the result in the following lines-written in the year 1723, to wit:
Full forty years have now their changes made,
Since the foundation of this town was laid;
When Jove and Saturn were in Leo join'd,
They saw the survey of the place designed:
Swift were these planets, and the world will own
Swift was the progress of the rising town.
The Lion is an active regal sign;
And Sol beheld the two superiors join.
A city built with such propitious rays
Will stand to see old walls and happy days.
But kingdoms, cities, men in every state
Are subject to vicissitudes of fate.
An envious cloud may shade the smiling morn
Though fates ordain the beaming Sun's return!"
From 1700 to 1746, Jacob Taylor fairly consistantly published his Almanac. He had "provided monthy astrological calculations, anecdotes, weather predictions, and even, in 1741, selections from Milton's Paradise Lost. Many editions contain examples of Taylor's own poetry, which won praise from many of his contemporaries."
The 1790 Federal Census for Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, District: Lower Dublin Township lists three Taylor households:
Jacob Taylor: 1 male over 16; 1 female.
Jacob Taylor, Jr.: 1 male over 16; 2 males under 16; 1 female.
James Taylor: 2 males over 16; 4 females.
These three Taylor households have the 'address' T460 and are within the group "Lower Dublin to the left."
It is not yet certain whether any of the above mentioned Taylor households ever lived at or owned what would eventually be called Ury.
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The Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom
The royal motto of Gustavus Adolphus was "Cum Deo et victribus armis" "With God and victorious arms"
An account of Graeme Park and the old Keith mansion is also within The York Road: Old and New.
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Ury House -- 1728
[The Swedish blockhouse] was enlarged by the Taylors... The great antiquity of this mansion is shown by its construction and architecture. Two old chimney back plates of iron, one ornamented with the English coat-of-arms and the legend "Dieu et mon Droit," and the other with a plain scroll bearing the date of 1728 are objects of interest to the antiquarian, The latter plate was not taken from the oldest part of the mansion. A plate similar to this is in Governor Keith's house.
Rev. S. F. Hotchkin, M.A., The York Road, Old and New (Philadelphia: Binder & Kelly, Publishers, 1892), pp.406-9.
For many years in one of the fireplaces there was an old Swedish fireback bearing the arms of Gustavus Adolphus, but this has disappeared.
The first addition to the original building was made in 1728.
Harold Donaldson Eberlein and Cortlandt Van Dyke Hubbard, "Colonial Philadelphia No. 13 Ury House" (Evening Public Ledger, 1939.10.03).
It was in 1728 that the first addition to the structure was made--three large rooms, one above the other, on the west side. The date was set on the fireback above the fireplace in the hall, so that isn't a guess on our part.
Rex Rittenhouse, "Ury House Guest Was Victim Of Jittery Maid" (Philadelphia: The Evening Bulletin, 1945.10.21).
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