From Kelso to Kalamazoo The Life and Times of George Taylor 1803-1891 is the story of an extraordinary man. Raised as the son of a Scottish Borders shepherd, George Taylor trained as a nurseryman before going on to have a successful career as an award-winning gardener and forester in and around early nineteenth-century Kelso. At the age of fifty, he took the major decision to follow his brothers to the United States of America. Moving with his young family to Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1853. Taylor once again established himself as a successful nurseryman and he was responsible for introducing celery cultivation to the state of Michigan. He was married four times; two of his four wives died in childbirth. As with so many of his nineteenth-century contemporaries, George Taylor was an avid reader of newspapers and an extensive traveller, both before and after his emigration. He also comments on matters of the day such as slavery, the Temperance Movement, and the Disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843. During his travels he encountered a women claiming to have been the wife of the real Tam o‘ Shanter and experienced notable events such as the Great Fire of Chicago in 1871. This account, handed down through George Taylor’s family for over a hundred years, provides an all-too-rare direct testimony on the thoughts and experiences of an emigrant from Lowland Scotland. As such, George Taylor's memoir is not only a good read but is also of genuine historical value.