William Taylor (May 2, 1821 – May 18, 1902) was an American preacher, Methodist missionary, and bishop whose innovative “Pauline missions” reshaped global evangelism in the 19th century. Born near Lexington, Virginia, to Stuart Taylor, a farmer and tanner, and Martha Hickman, he grew up in Rockbridge County, teaching school before his conversion in 1841 at a Methodist Episcopal camp meeting. Accepted by the Baltimore Conference in 1843, he preached in rural circuits and Washington, D.C., marrying Anne Kimberlin in 1846, with whom he had six children, four surviving infancy. In 1849, the Methodist General Conference sent him to San Francisco during the California Gold Rush, where he preached on streets and wharves, ministering unsalaried to Native Americans, Chinese immigrants, and the poor, earning the nickname “California Taylor.” Taylor’s preaching career expanded dramatically as he pioneered self-supporting missions worldwide. After his San Francisco Bethel burned in 1856, he wrote Seven Years’ Street Preaching in San Francisco (1856), a bestseller funding his debts. From 1863 to 1884, he preached across Australia, South Africa, India, and South America, defying mission boards by establishing autonomous churches—self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing—detailed in works like Pauline Methods of Missionary Work (1879). Elected Methodist Episcopal Missionary Bishop for Africa in 1884, he planted churches in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Mozambique, and the Congo until retiring in 1896. His Story of My Life (1895) chronicled a ministry spanning five continents, unmatched in scope. Known for a forceful baritone and “Yankee” vigor, he died at 81 in Palo Alto, California, buried in Mountain View Cemetery, leaving a legacy as a folk hero of radical Methodist and Holiness missions, honored by Taylor University in Indiana.