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Howard C. Taylor

Physician

Centurion, 1917–1949

Full Name Howard Canning Taylor

Born 17 March 1868 in Greens Farms, Connecticut

Died 27 March 1949 in New York (Manhattan), New York

Buried Oak Lawn Cemetery, Fairfield, Connecticut

Proposed by Charles North Dowd and W. Emlen Roosevelt

Elected 1 December 1917 at age forty-nine

Archivist’s Note: Father of Howard C. Taylor Jr.

Century Memorial

Howard Canning Taylor. [Born] 1868. Physician.

He had all the top honors that his professional brethren could bestow: President of the American Gynecological Society, of the New York Obstetrical Society, of the New York County Medical Society, of the American Society for the Control of Cancer. He was nationally and internationally known and respected for his professional attainments.

All this is as it should be; but it does not suffice to explain Dr. Taylor. The convincing explanation is Sir William Osler’s: “. . . in the sphere of mind and morals men turn instinctively toward the light in the same way that animals and plants do, in obedience to the universal law of heliotropism; and the value of a man’s life can be gauged by the heliotropic influence he exerts on his fellows.”

He did not publish much: he advanced his profession by his example and he trained his younger colleagues the same way. They and his patients were turned irresistibly to him by the heliotropic influence of his character and trained abilities; and, having turned, they found in him light, hope, confidence and justified faith.

That was Dr. Taylor.

Source: Henry Allen Moe Papers, Mss.B.M722. Reproduced by permission of American Philosophical Society Library & Museum, Philadelphia

Henry Allen Moe
Henry Allen Moe Papers, 1949 Memorials