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New Bern showcases buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places dating back to the 1700s. The Isaac Taylor House, is a federal-style urban mansion built in 1792 by a wealthy merchant ship owner and gentleman planter. Isaac Taylor is the great-great-great-grandfather of illustrious Tar Heel singers Livingston and James Taylor.

 

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The Isaac Taylor House is one of the stops on the Ghosts of New Bern Tour,  and is said to be haunted by a few paranormal elements, ghosts and spirits.

It is said that  Miss Fanny was the youngest daughter of Isaac Taylor. She was due to be married, but a week before her wedding, her fiancé went for a walk, collapsed in the street and died. Miss Fanny was heartbroken and vowed to never leave her house again. It is said if you walk by the house, you can see her sitting in the first level front window, waiting for her fiancé to come home.

Isaac Taylor’s granddaughters, Phoebe and Catherine, were living in the house when Union troops arrived in New Bern in 1862. The sisters withdrew to the third and fourth floors and remained there for the duration of the war, using a basket with bracket-and-pulley system to transport food and supplies. You can still see the device on the south side of the building.

New Bern, Headquarters of the 44th Massachusetts 

The Isaac Taylor House (currently 228 Craven Street). The house was built ca. 1792 by merchant, ship owner and planter, Isaac Taylor. Taylor (1762-1841) emigrated to North Carolina from Scotland. He married Hannah Justice in November 1792. During the Civil War, several Union regiments used the house as headquarters, including the 44th and 45th Massachusetts. [See John Green III, A New Bern Album (New Bern: Tryon Palace Commission, 1985), p. 50 and Peter Sandbeck ,Architectural History of New Bern and Craven County (New Bern: Tryon Palace Commission, 1988), pp. 326-328.]

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