Alanson Taylor was born in Illinois in 1829, the son of John Taylor and Susan Ellen Dustin. Susan was a direct desendant of Hannah Dustin who was one of the continents early heroines. She made a dramatic escape from Indian captivity, scalping a number of them in the process. John and Susan moved from western New York to Illinois about 1819, from Illinois to Potosi, Grant County, Wisconsin in 1836 where they resided until their deaths. It is interesting to find that the McFarlin family was residing in close proximity to the Taylors from the time that they arrived in Illinois until the present time.

Alanson was the third of eight children and was one of two brothers who came to California; he to Shasta County and his brother, John, to Trinity County. We find Alanson in Yuba County in the 1850 census listed as a teamster. Nothing more is known of him until 1861 when he married Sarah McFarlin in Shasta County. At some point, probably 1853 or 1854 he did lose an eye in a fight with the Pitt River Indians east or northeast of the present town of Redding. This is clearly visable in the large picture in the display case.

Sarah McFarlin had just arrived from Wisconsin on her fathers wagon train the previous year. George McFarlin Sarah's father had been wagonmaster of two earlier wagon trains from Wisconsin and we suspect that Alanson may possibly have been a teamster on all three of these wagon trains, since their home residences in Wisconsin were only about twenty miles apart.

They resided in and around the present town of Ono until their deaths. He in 1895 and she in 1931. The family names of the marriages of their seven children tell a story of their own on just how deeply rooted this family is in Shasta County History: Peterson, Webb, Covey, Bartell, Hagedorn, and Hightower.

Source: Shasta Historical Society