Capt. George H. Taber (1808-1901)
After sailing on only one whaling voyage in 1825, George Hathaway Taber entered the merchant service as a first mate and was named captain of the brig Formax in 1832. He sailed many voyages to Europe, the West Indies and South America before retiring from the sea in 1842. He served as a Selectman in 1851, 1863, 1869-1878 and 1886 and was an assessor for 15 years. He was president of the Fairhaven Institution for Savings and a trustee of the Millicent Library. Taber became a Freemason in the Star-in-the-East Lodge of New Bedford in 1850 and remained active in Masonic affairs for more than fifty years. The year of his death, the Concordia Lodge, F.& A.M. in Fairhaven changed its name to the George H. Taber Lodge, F.&A.M., the first time a Masonic lodge was ever named for a living person. Taber’s nephew Henry H. Rogers presented the lodge building at the northwest corner of Main and Center streets the same year. Taber was a descendant of Thomas Taber and, through the Hathaway side of his family, Mayflower passenger John Cooke.
The son of John Taber and Mary Hathaway, he married Eliza Parker Bates, the daughter of Seventh-Day Adventists founder Joseph Bates Jr.
