James Monroe Taylor


James Monroe Taylor was a Baptist minister who was the fourth president of Vassar College.

Education and career

Born in Brooklyn, New York, he was educated at the University of Rochester, from which he graduated in 1868. He went on to study at Rochester Theological Seminary, becoming ordained as a Baptist minister in 1871. He toured Europe in 1873, and then spent 16 years working as a minister around Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Taylor became the president of Vassar College in 1886, and remained in position until 1914.

Personal life

Taylor married Kate Huntington in the 1870s. The couple had four children. Taylor died of pneumonia in 1916, only two years after retiring from Vassar.