Presidents of Georgetown College

Joseph Judson Taylor    1903-1907

            When Joseph Judson Taylor assumed the presidency, he faced a divided board of trustees and rampant anti-intellectualism among Kentucky Baptists.

             Taylor followed an early call to the ministry.  Born to Daniel Gray and Martha King Taylor in Henry County, Virginia, on November 1, 1855, Taylor was ordained as Baptist minister at age twenty-one.  Within five years of entering the University of Richmond, in Virginia, in 1875, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees.  He continued his education at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Kentucky, but studied for only one year, before leaving to pastor the Calvary Baptist Church, Lexington, Kentucky, in 1881.  In the second year of his pastorate, he married Anna Hinton of Paris, Kentucky.  They had one son, Edgar Hinton Taylor.  Active in Baptist activities, Joseph Judson Taylor served as vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Home Mission Board.  He left Calvary in 1887, and pastored two churches—First Church, in Mobile, Alabama (1887-1899) and Freemason Street Baptist Church, in Norfolk, Virginia (1899-1903)—before coming to Georgetown.

             Taylor was chosen president in 1903 by a sharply split board.  He accomplished little because his relations with the trustees never improved.  He arranged for the formation of the Kappa Alpha Order, the Lambda Mu Social Club, and the Pi Kappa Alpha, the first Greek social fraternities on campus.  In 1904, William Branham went to Oxford University as the college’s first Rhodes Scholar.  Boys and girls basketball teams were organized in 1905.  He named Robert Taylor Hinton, his brother-in-law, to teach biology and coach all sports.  In 1906, the selection of trustees, once exclusively controlled by the Kentucky Baptist Education Society, was placed under the Kentucky Baptist Convention.  A new society was formed with only the power to recommend trustees for the college’s board.  This change had been proposed in 1894 by a Georgetown alumnus and trustee.  When Taylor came, the enrollment was 187 in the college and 132 in the academy; four years later it had fallen to 145 and 107, respectively.

             Taylor resigned in 1907, and returned to preaching.  He pastored churches in Knoxville, Tennessee (1907-1915) and in Savannah, Georgia (1915-1918), before his death in January 1930 in Lexington, Kentucky.

             During his career, Taylor also authored The Ordinances (1889), A Country Preacher (1894), Christian Science Cult (1903), Commentary on Mark (1911), The Sabbatic Question (1913), The God of War (1920), and Radiant Hopefulness (1922).