William H. Armstrong's self-published book, Father Taylor Boston's Sailor Preacher As Seen and Heard by His Contemporaries, is a well-researched compilation of primary source material about one of the most celebrated preachers in antebellum America: Edward Thompson Taylor, or as he was best known, “Father Taylor.”
As Armstrong's excellent biographical introduction relates, Taylor left his native Virginia at a young age and spent his early years as a sailor. While imprisoned in Nova Scotia in 1812, his fellow prisoners noted his piety, and Taylor served as their de facto chaplain. After release, he became a Methodist preacher in New England. It was not until 1828, however, that Taylor found appointment to the work that would bring him notoriety. In that year, he started a Bethel to serve sailors in Boston's port. Taylor served in that capacity until his death in 1871.
In many ways, Taylor's life was a study in contrasts. He was a Methodist preacher in Congregational New England, but he went against his Methodist brethren to partner with Unitarians in support of his ministry. Taylor was also marginally educated and only learned to read as an adult. Even so, his preaching attracted the attention of the lettered elite of Boston and those who visited the city. Prominent names such as Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Dickens, and many others visited his Bethel to listen to his sermons. It is not clear how Herman Melville was exposed to Taylor's work, but he became the model for Moby Dick's Father Mapple.
Written accounts of such witnesses to Taylor's oratory and ministry provide the bulk of Armstrong's book. These accounts are organized chronologically, usually by date of publication, but occasionally by the date of the event they record. Armstrong has done an impressive amount of research compiling, editing, and presenting this source material, and he prefaces most accounts with a helpful paragraph that introduces the author and aids the reader in appreciating the text. A bibliography of additional source material is included in the book as well.
By assembling the impressions recorded by others about Taylor, Armstrong presents a robust picture of a man who left no written record of his own life and work. Even the physical evidence of his ministry quickly faded after his death. As Armstrong notes, after Taylor's death the Bethel he founded was sold and the marble inscription bearing his name was “soon chiseled away” (19).
Armstrong amply demonstrates that Taylor's influence on American religious and literary life extended far beyond being the inspiration for a literary character. As it is presented, however, this book will be most useful as a collection of primary source documents that illustrate the work of a mid-nineteenth-century Methodist preacher in Boston and his unique field of ministry amongst sailors. To that end, a table of contents keyed to the date of record would improve this book's usefulness as a reference.
One cannot help but wonder if the historiographic impulse to present source material about a man who was influential in his day, but who left no records, might not have been taken one step further. It is undoubtably true, as Armstrong notes in his preface, that the impression of Taylor on the seamen with whom he worked “remains largely unrecoverable” (xii). Still, other, non-literary source material might have also been included, such as membership numbers from Methodist conference journals, to give some scope and scale to that part of Taylors legacy.
A better option might be for Armstrong to use the good work he has done in assembling this source material into a full biography that uses Taylor's life and work to illumine a different view of antebellum religious life in Boston.
