Taylor and Forgie Funeral Directors

**Fast Facts**
Type of organisation:	Business
Town or locality:	Gawler
Date established:	1855
Established by:	WS Taylor
Business or purpose:	Carpenters, builders and undertakers

The business of Tayor & Forgie has not always borne that name and they were not always funeral directors.

William Stephen Taylor was about thirty years of age in 1855 when he began the business Taylor & Ponder, carpenters and builders, in partnership with John Ponder. In 1865, Ponder moved to Kapunda and a new partnership between Taylor and Alexander Forgie was formed. This is when the business known as Taylor & Forgie was founded. Some time after this (possibly in the early 1870s), Taylor and Forgie extended their business to inlcude undertaking in addition to carpentry and building.

After the retirement of W S Taylor in 1882, he was replaced in the business by his brother Henry Charles Taylor. The partnership between Taylor and Forgie was dissolved in 1901 after the death of Alexander Forgie and at that time his two sons, Alexander Philip Forgie and James Forgie took over the operation of the business.

Taylor & Forgie were the most active builders and carpenters in Gawler during the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. They built numerous houses in Gawler and were responsible for substantial additions to the Gawler Institute, the Police Station, the Old Spot Hotel, Taylor Brothers Buttery factory and Sheard's Drapers (Essex House). As undertakers, Taylor & Forgie were responsbile for the burial of many of Gawler's prominent residents such as James Martin (1899), James Pile (1885), David Fotheringham (1898) and Thomas Mankey (1872).

Taylor & Forgie's first premises were located in Tod Street, Gawler.