Tell Taylor was a comedy actor, and composer of more than 21 sentimental songs, the best known "Down by the Old Mill Stream".
The song, words and music, were written and published about 1910 while Taylor was teaching rural school,
and made popular by the vaudeville team, "The Orpheus Comedy Fourwho first used it in that year.
More than 5,000,000 copies have been sold since it was first published.

Taylor was born on a farm 5 miles east of Findlay in 1876.
The Blanchard River, which he swam as a boy, was the original "Mill Stream". The old Misamore Mill at the bridge is gone
but the site is still visible. On one of his trips to Findlay, in 1908, Tell decided to go fishing along the Blanchard River,
as he often did. He began to think about his childhood and the romantic dreamer in him took over.
He thought of the girl he once loved and of an old mill that once thrived but had since been abandoned.
He jotted down some lines that reflected his thoughts from that afternoon of fishing.
For two years that song would lay in drawer all but forgotten.
Two years later, Tell would finally publish "Down By the Old Mill Stream."
It became his most popular song.

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