Origins in Kentucky

Baylor was briefly a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1819 to 1820, before he resigned and moved to Alabama.^[1][7] He had offered himself for the Kentucky Legislature in place of his older brother George, who was stepping down. He played the violin or fiddle along with his opponent, Robert P. Letcher, to attract voters, later claiming a narrow victory.^[3]

Move to Tuscaloosa

After a single term in office in Kentucky, Baylor left and abruptly moved to Alabama. Some have attributed the sudden move to grief. A persistent story says that while he was riding with a young woman he intended to marry, she was bucked off her horse and dragged to her death, with Baylor unable to save her. Finding the familiar scenes of Kentucky too painful to endure, he left for Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Once there, Baylor began to practice law and later continued his political career.^[3] In 1824, he was elected to the Alabama House of Representatives. Baylor was elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-first Congress (March 4, 1829 – March 3, 1831) from Alabama's 2nd congressional district and was an unsuccessful candidate for election in 1830 to the Twenty-second Congress. In 1836, Baylor fought as a lieutenant colonel against the Creek tribe in the Creek War of 1836.^[7] In 1839, he converted to Christianity and was ordained a Baptist minister.^[1] Shortly after the battle of San Jacinto, Baylor's nephew, John Walker Baylor Jr., set out to visit his uncles R. E. B. Baylor and Walker Keith Baylor in Mobile, Alabama. While at the home of relatives on furlough from the Texian Army, J. W. Baylor Jr. died from wounds he received that had become infected.^[8]

Career in Texas

In 1839, Baylor moved to La Grange, Texas.^[5] On February 5, 1840, Mirabeau Lamar, the second president of the Republic of Texas, signed the following Act of Congress:

"Section 1st--Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Republic of Texas, in Congress assembled. That the Secretary of War, be required to issue to R. E. B. Baylor heir of Doctor J. W. Baylor deceased a certificate for 640 acres of land as a donation for participating in the battle of San Jacinto, and a certificate for 640 acres of land allowed to those who died in the service of the country.
"Section 2nd--Be it further enacted. That the commissioner of the General Land Office be required to grant to the said R.E.B. Baylor, heir of Doctor J. W. Baylor deceased a certificate of one third of a league of land, being the headright of Doctor J. W. Baylor deceased, any law to the contrary notwithstanding."

This act secured a large amount of land in Baylor's name as the heir to his nephew and for his nephew's services in the army. He ended up giving it to his nephew's brothers and sisters.^[9] He quickly made a name for himself in Texas law as judge of the Third Judicial District of the Congress of the Republic of Texas, and was appointed to the Supreme Court of the Republic of Texas as an associate justice in 1841, a position he would hold until the annexation of Texas in 1845.^[7] After Texas attained statehood, Baylor was appointed by Governor J. P. Henderson as judge over the Third Judicial District of the new state, a position he would hold until his retirement in 1863.^[7] He lived the remainder of his life in Gay Hill, Texas.^[5]

Baylor was one of the first officers of the Texas Baptist Educational Society^[10] and, in 1844, along with Reverend William Tryon and Reverend James Huckins, sent a petition to the Congress of the Republic of Texas asking the nation to charter a Baptist university.^[11] In response to this petition, The Republic of Texas produced an Act of Congress that was signed on February 1, 1845, by Anson Jones, providing the charter that yielded Baylor University and, later, the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor.^[12] Baylor participated in the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1845, advocating for a system of judicial appointment and fought strongly against judicial elections. He was unsuccessful in this effort.^[13]

In the 1850s, Baylor was an influential leader in the Nativist Texas Know Nothing Party and was named the Texas Know Nothing Party's "Grand President."^[14] During the Civil War, Baylor supported the Confederacy and the grounds of Baylor University, then in Independence, were used as a training and staging ground for the Confederate Army.^[15][16] A nephew of Baylor, John R. Baylor, was a prominent leader in the Confederacy serving as both a governor and later as a member of the Confederate Congress.

Baylor was a slave owner. A report commissioned by Baylor University found that in 1860 enslaved persons formed a significant portion of his wealth; the 1860 Census records him as owning 33 slaves.^[17] In his role as a judge, he once punished an abolitionist harboring an escaped slave. Another man was punished for not returning a borrowed slave promptly. In 1854, Judge Baylor sentenced a slave to hang for arson. In 1856, he ordered the execution of yet another slave. In 1857, he levied a heavy fine on a white person who bought some bacon from a slave. And in 1862, as the Civil War raged, he ordered the execution of a slave for “intent to rape a white female.”^[15]

Death

He died on January 6, 1874, and was buried in Independence, Texas, on the original site of Baylor University. In 1917, his remains were exhumed and transferred to the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, Texas. In 1917, after the original Baylor had closed, the residents of Independence's hostility toward the new Baylor University in Waco was too great to permit reburial there, so eventually Judge Baylor was re-interred in the main building at University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton. A fire destroyed the building and ruined his gravesite in 1964. A monument was erected in 1966, bearing the single word "Baylor."^[13]

Religious views

Before 1839, Baylor had always been a skeptic. He had personally identified first as a Deist and then a Unitarian.^[3] He converted and became a Baptist in 1839.^[18][19]