Taylor was named for a war hero who'd never set foot in it

People assume a place called Taylor was named for some pioneer named Taylor who cleared the first farm. It wasn’t. The name honors Zachary Taylor — “Old Rough and Ready,” the general America was cheering in the newspapers in 1847, two years before he became the 12th president of the United States.

The timing is what makes it work. Settlers in this stretch of Wayne County had been part of Ecorse Township to the west. The trip to the township seat for any civic business was a slog. So they petitioned to split off, and on March 16, 1847 the new township was organized. That spring, Taylor was the most famous soldier in the country, fresh off lopsided wins in the Mexican-American War. At Buena Vista he’d reportedly held off Santa Anna’s much larger force with a few thousand men. Naming your brand-new township after the hero of the hour was a way of planting a flag — of saying this raw farm country was part of something bigger.

Taylor the man got elected president in 1849. Then he died just sixteen months in, in July 1850, after falling ill at a Fourth of July ceremony. He never had much to do with Michigan, let alone this patch of it. The township just kept his name through more than a century of being mostly farms and gravel roads.

The fields are long gone. Taylor Township became a home-rule city in 1968 and grew into one of Downriver’s bigger suburbs. These days it’s better known for Heritage Park, the big summer fireworks, and a Little League team that once went all the way. But the name on the welcome sign still belongs to a Louisiana plantation owner and career Army officer who, as far as anyone can tell, never once stood on the ground that carries his name.