(far right) death. Despite his wealth, Taylor never married, saying to his
brother in 1772, “I am pretty confident I never shall marry.” Instead Taylor chose to co-habit with a number of "housekeepers", who were sometimes enslaved Black women, but were often
free people of color. One of his
mixed-race mistresses was Grace Donne, a "
quadroon" who lived with him for more than thirty-years, and was the mother of at least one of his mixed-race children. Grace was also a "doctress", who used the hygiene and traditional herbal remedies employed by
obeah women, to nurse Taylor back to health when he became ill with a
fever. Grace was a contemporary of a successful group of Jamaican doctresses, such as
Cubah Cornwallis, Sarah Adams, and Mrs Grant, the mother of
Mary Seacole. Their traditions of using hygiene were arguably adopted by
Florence Nightingale a century later, during the
Crimean War. Even though Taylor had several mixed-race children some of whom were born into and remained enslaved, Taylor never saw them as his heirs, because of the Black ancestry of their mother. In addition, Jamaican law at the time forbade planters from passing on significant amounts of property to their "
mulatto" offspring. In 1804, Grace died, leaving Taylor distraught. Instead, Simon Taylor always considered his younger brother John to be his heir, but while Simon was frugal, John was a spendthrift, and Simon often disapproved of his younger brother's extravagant lifestyle. Simon persuaded John to return to Jamaica to take control of the estates he had inherited in
Hanover Parish, but within a year of arriving, John died in 1786. Simon was then saddled with the additional problems of clearing the debts incurred by John's Hanover estates. The elder Simon would in later years complain about the extravagance of his nephew and namesake in Britain, but he was reluctant to encourage him to return to Jamaica, after the death of John. Maria, Lady Nugent, the governor's wife, wrote that Taylor had
mulatto mixed-race children with slave women on every one of his estates.
Death and legacy Taylor made a trip to
Port Royal, dogged by serious illness, by then determined to return to
Britain to die there surrounded by his nephew and nieces. However, he died there on 14 April 1813, never making it back to
England. His body was
interred at his
main residence in
Kingston. When Taylor died, there were over 2,000 people on his properties, and his personal estate was valued at more than £750,000. Some calculations put his wealth at over £1 million. He left the majority of his estate to his nephew, the baronet Sir Simon Taylor. However, he made some provisions for his mixed-race children. Taylor left £500 to his free mulatto mistress Sarah Hunter, and £1,000 for their reputed daughter, the "
quadroon" Sarah Taylor. In addition, Sarah Taylor's daughter, Sarah Cathcart, was allowed to inherit £2,000 when she turned 21, making these three mixed-race women wealthier than many white subjects in Jamaica at that time. He also left £500 to Grace Harris, the mixed-race niece of Grace Donne. When Hunter died in 1834, she left behind a personal estate of over £1,500, including two horses and 14 slaves.} ==Citations==