Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 2.djvu/34

 as of medium height, rather heavy in build, strong and capable of great endurance. His complexion was dark, his hair reddish-brown, his eyes dark brown, large and full. He was smooth-faced and boyish looking. He was a constant student, always carrying books with him. He was a stenographer, and played the violin. He was quiet but persistent in his purposes, faithful, courageous and loyal. When John Brown issued his eleven orders, just before the night of the attack, No. 6 required Captain Watson Brown and Steward Taylor to “hold the covered bridge over the Potomac and arrest anyone attempting to cross, using pikes, if resistance is offered, instead of Sharpe’s rifles.” Taylor was cool and fearless through out the conflict. He escorted one of Brown’s prisoners to his home, to let his family know of his safety, and brought him back through crowds of armed, excited, desperate, drunken men. Later on in the day, while bravely fighting near the engine house, he received a mortal wound. He fell in the thickest of the fight and suffered great agony for three hours, when death came to his relief. The day before the attack he remarked to his comrades that he felt he would be one of the first killed. He was so impressed with the presentiment that he wrote farewell letters to his friends at home and then calmly marched to his death. Anne Brown, who kept house for her father, brothers and their comrades at the Kennedy farm, says of Steward Taylor: “He was one who could never have betrayed a friend or deserted a post.”

Jeremiah G. Anderson was the grandson of an officer of the American Revolution. His father, John Anderson, left the slave State of Virginia soon after his marriage and settled in Putnam County, Indiana, where Jeremiah was born on the 17th of April, 1833. After his father’s death, his mother moved with her family to Des Moines, Iowa. Jeremiah was well educated. He was sent by his mother to a Presbyterian Academy at Kossuth, in 1854, to prepare for the ministry. Hon. James W. McDill, afterwards