Adelbert Augustine Taylor
1883-1938
Adelbert Augustine Taylor was born April 9, 1883, in Springerville, Arizona. In the spring of 1881, Adelbert’s father, Earnest Leander Taylor and his mother, mary Magdalene, with two young sons, Guy, nine, and Alonzo, three years of age, moved to Springerville from Santaquin, Utah.
Earnest Leander (or E.L. as he was called) had married a plural wife, Hannah Skousen, in April 1884, and soon thereafter, because of increasing prosecution of polygamists in the Mormon Church, E.L., with his new bride, during the 125 emigrants in the expedition to Mexico to establish colonies to escape the harassment they were undergoing.
After establishing residence in Mexico, E.L. returned to Arizona and moved his wife Mary and her five children to Colonia Juarez, Chihuahua. There Adelbert, the fourth of 12 children born to E.L. and Mary, grew up.
His younger sister, Flora, recounted some of the details of Adelbert’s early life in Colonia Juarez. He recalled that he was a terrible tease, and somewhat of the show-off, a regular Don Juan. He dressed nicely and always had a way with the ladies. Adelbert or Delbert, as he was called through his life, detested his middle name, Augustine, and when Flora divulged it to his girlfriend, Lucille Robinson, whom he later married, she received quite a “licking.”
Adelbert Augustine Taylor attended the elementary or grade school, finished the eighth grade enrolled in the Juarez Stake Academy. He attended intermittently during his late teens years, as he helped his father and older brothers, Guy and Alonzo, in their cattle business. They bought cattle for ranches in northern Mexico, and ship them to the Omaha in Kansas City stockyards. 1902, Delbert, his father and brother going, together with his uncle Pete Skousen and his two sons, went to Raymond, Alberta, Canada, where they purchased to large wheat farms. For two years, the crops were good and they made a lot of money. There in a severe drought came and a hailstorm ruined a good crop of wheat just before it was ready to harvest. Delbert’s sister, Lydia, and her husband, George Redd, went to Canada and worked on the forms for a while, then disposed of all their holdings in Canada and move back to Mexico.
Adelbert Augustine Taylor graduated from the Juarez Stake Academy in 1906. He was a good student, popular, and played the trombone in the Academy band. Soon after his graduation he was called on a mission to Germany. On his return his sweetheart, Lucille Robinson from Colonia Dublan, met him in Salt Lake City and they were married in the Salt Lake Temple on February 10, 1910.
Delbert and Lucille made their home in Colonia Dublan where he principal of the elementary school. His sister, Flora, moved down from Colonia Juarez, lived in their home, and taught the second grade in the Dublan school for a year.
As the business interests of Delbert’s father began driving and expanding, Delbert was taken in as a junior partner, and soon their enterprises included a tannery where hides were processed and fine grades of leather products such a saddles, harnesses, shoes, etc. were manufactured. Delbert’s mission experiences enhanced his ability to relate well with people. He found markets for the company’s products and made deals for needed capital to make carload purchases of cattle hides.
After the Exodus of the Mormon colonists, the Taylor Brothers Company expanded its enterprises, and invested in mining and oil stocks in the states of Guanajuato, Veracruz, and Coahuila. Delbert spent a great deal of time in Mexico City promoting the sale of mining stock which yielded a 25% profit. He was a good salesman and made several trips to California and other parts of the United States and Mexico. However, some of the mining stock proved to be of little value.
In 1920, Delbert and his brother, A.L. dissolved their partnership with their brother Harvey, who retained the flour mills and farms near Colonia Dublan. After liquidating other properties in Chihuahua in El Paso, A. L. and Delbert bought property in the state of Nayarit unless there was a small mine which produced gold and silver ore.
A.L.’s son, Leander, went to the ranch and helped construct the mill for grinding ore. After several years, A.L. And Delbert divided their properties and a nephew, Gene Taylor, joined them working on Delbert’s ranch at San Felipe there is a small village on the ranch supplied sufficient labor to cultivating harvest the many types of crops grown in that area, such as corn, Chile, coffee, beans, mangoes, papayas and other tropical fruits.
In December 1938, A.L. was ambushed, shot and killed by several Mexicans as he was returning from Delbert’s ranch. Delbert’s health deteriorated as he was suffering from a liver ailment. The situation on the ranch became rather volatile. Leander and Gene returned to Sonora and Arizona, where Gene was reunited with his family. Shortly after A.L.’s death, Delbert died on the ranch at San Felipe they and was buried there.
Delbert’s wife, Lucille Taylor, is still alive in 1985 at 96 years of age and living in Colonia Dublan. She and her husband were parents of five children: Arnold, who died in his youth, John Bennion, Ruth, Vilda and Adelbert.
Stalwarts South of the Border, Nelle Spilsbury Hatch page 657
I don’t know who wrote this biography about Delbert Taylor but they omitted the fact that Delbert and Lucille divorced and Delbert was then married to a woman in Nayarit. I don’t recall her name but Delbert then had 3 more children by his second wife. Their names are Gloria, Sandra and Agustin. All of which attended school at the JSA. I know that Agustin graduated from the Academy in 1964 and later served a mission for the Church.
While researching the name of Delbert’s wife that he married in Nayarit I found that she was not his second wife. His second wife was a woman by the name of Juanita Morgan with whom he had one child a girl by the name of June. He then married Victoria de la Paz Ulloa in Nayarit ( or perhaps Jalisco). She is the mother of Gloria, Sandra and Agustin.