418 
WILLIAM BOWER TAYLOR. 
The earliest movement toward a reform in the civil service, 
it will be remembered, occurred early in the seventies, under 
President Grant, and one of the compliments paid to Judge 
Shellabarger’s ability and integrity was his selection as a 
member of that earliest Civil Service Commission. 
From 1848 to 1874 Judge Shellabarger’s home was in 
Springfield, Ohio. In 1875, however, he moved to Washing¬ 
ton and formed a law partnership with Honorable Jeremiah 
M. Wilson, a former associate in Congress—a partnership 
which lasted till death. 
His relations to this Society were not intimate. He became 
a member on April 10,1875, shortly after taking up his resi¬ 
dence in Washington, and retained his membership to the 
last. In appearance, as we saw him in the afternoon of his 
life, he was a tall man, of large frame, deliberate in his walk 
and manner, slightly bent, and having the appearance of a 
scholar or philosopher rather than that of a man of affairs. 
He married, May 25, 1849, Elizabet h Henrietta Brandriff, 
of Troy, Ohio. She, with two daughters, Miss Anna A. 
Shellabarger, of Washington, and Mrs. J. H. Young, of Spring- 
field, Ohio, survive him. 
Marcus Baker. 
WILLIAM BOWER TAYLOR. 
1821-1895. 
[Read before the Society, May 23, 1896.*] 
William Bower Taylor, born in the city of Philadelphia 
May 23, 1821, was the son of Colonel Joseph Taylor and 
Anna Farmer Bower, both of Philadelphia. 
Colonel Taylor was a bookbinder, and in 1821 was elected 
colonel of the Seventy-ninth regiment of Pennsylvania mili- 
* This memoir, as here printed, is an abridgement of the paper as read. 
The memoir, in full, was published in Smithsonian Institution Annual 
Report for 1896, vol. 1, p. 645. 
