Isaac “Ike” Taylor (1864 - 1959)
Isaac Taylor was born in Yorkshire, England. He travelled to the Klondike (via Australia) in 1898. He met William S. Drury for the first time on the Ashcroft Trail. Drury went to Atlin, and Taylor went to Skagway and worked as a lineman for the White Pass and Yukon Route (WP&YR) railway. When he heard about the Atlin strike, Taylor crossed over on the Fantail Trail. He met Drury again and they started buying and selling goods to miners at Discovery. When the railway reached Bennet, they moved their store there, operating at first out of a tent.1)
They came north to Whitehorse in 1899 and established a store at Front and Lambert. The 1905 fire burnt the store and many other buildings, and they rebuilt on the site of the old Grand Hotel. Taylor operated the store in Whitehorse and Drury went out to their several outlying stores to stock them and buy furs. They went on to establish a chain of Taylor and Drury stores throughout the north.2)
Isaac married Sarah Drury, his partner's sister from England, in 1903. Their children were Florence, William D., Charles, and Albert.3) The Whitehorse store closed in 1974, after seventy-five years of operation. That year the store employed more than eighty-five people and had annual sales over three million dollars.4)