page_title: Major Taylor
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Major Taylor / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: This building on Pennsylvania Street between New York and Ohio Streets was originally built for a skating rink. Following that a bicycle sales and repair business owned by Charles F. Smith, of the Indiana Bicycle Co. occupied the site. H.T. Hearsey's bicycle business was there from 1890-1899. Other businesses followed until the site was cleared to make way for construction of the Federal Building 1903-1905.
context_page_description: Marshall Walter "Major" Taylor was an American professional cyclist. He was born and raised in Indianapolis, where he worked in bicycle shops and began racing multiple distances in the track and road disciplines of cycling. As a teenager, he moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, with his trainer and had a successful amateur career, which included breaking track records.
  Taylor turned professional in 1896, at the age of 18, living in cities on the East Coast and participating in multiple track events including six-day races. He moved his focus to the sprint event in 1897, competing in a national racing circuit, winning many races and gaining popularity with the public. Between 1898 and 1899, he set numerous world records in race distances ranging from the quarter-mile to the two-mile.
  Taylor won the sprint event at the 1899 world track championships to become the first African American to achieve the level of cycling world champion and the second black athlete to win a world championship in any sport. He was also a national sprint champion in 1899 and 1900. He raced in the U.S., Europe and Australasia between 1901 and 1904, beating the world's best riders.
context_section_description: Marshall Walter Taylor was the son of Gilbert Taylor, a Civil War veteran, and Saphronia Kelter Taylor. His parents migrated from Louisville, Kentucky, and settled on a farm in Bucktown, a rural area on the western edge of Indianapolis, Indiana. Taylor, who was born on November 26, 1878, in Indianapolis was one of eight children in the family that included five girls and three boys. Around 1887, his father began working in Indianapolis as a coachman for the Southards, a wealthy white family.
  When Taylor was a child he occasionally accompanied his father to work. Taylor soon became a close friend of the Southards's son, Daniel, who was the same age. From the age of eight until he was twelve, Taylor lived with the family and along with Daniel was tutored at their home. Taylor's living arrangement with the Southards provided him with more advantages than his parents could provide; however, this period of his life abruptly ended when the Southards moved to Chicago, Illinois. Taylor, who remained in Indianapolis, returned to live at his parents' home and "was soon thrust into the real world."
  The Southards provided 12-year-old Taylor with his first bicycle. By 1891 or early 1892, he had become such an expert trick rider that Tom Hay, an Indianapolis bicycle shop owner, hired him to perform bicycle stunts in front of the Hay and Willits bicycle shop. Taylor earned $6 a week for cleaning the shop and performing the stunts, plus a free bicycle worth $35. It is likely that Taylor received his nickname of "Major" because he performed the cycling stunts wearing a military uniform.
  Taylor left the Hay and Willits shop in 1892 or early 1893 to take a job as head trainer for Harry T. Hearsey's bicycle shop in Indianapolis, teaching local residents how to ride. About two years later, while working at Hearsey's shop, Taylor met Louis D. "Birdie" Munger, a former high-wheel bicycle racer who owned the Munger Cycle Manufacturing Company, a racing bicycle factory in Indianapolis. (Munger later established the Worcester Cycle Manufacturing Company factory in Worcester, Massachusetts.) With a shared interest in bicycle racing, the two became friends and Munger hired the teenaged Taylor to work odd jobs that included sending Taylor to area high schools and colleges to train cyclists and promote Munger's line of racing bicycles. Munger had also "made up his mind to make Taylor a champion" and coached him to become a racer.
caption: Harry T. Hearsey's bicycle shop in Downtown Indianapolis in 1896, where Taylor worked as a bicycle instructor
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