Alan Taylor was born in West Buxton, Maine, and grew up in Windham, graduating from Bonny Eagle High School. He decided to apply to liberal arts schools, and Colby accepted him. There he took a history class from Harold Raymond, and from then on he took every Raymond class he could.
Raymond, who retired in 1994, was the History Department's "utility superstar," Taylor said. Raymond threw himself into four or five different specialties. His Civil War course was perhaps best known, but he also offered seminars on the Napoleonic Wars and Russian history.
"Your first impression was someone who was quite shy and retiring," Taylor said of his mentor, "but he just lit up in front of a class.... He's the best lecturer I've every heard, and I've heard a lot."
Taylor learned his lessons well, according to Raymond, who still lives with his wife in Waterville and gets periodic visits from his former student. Asked if Taylor is his most accomplished student, Raymond agreed, adding, "One of the two best." He also had Doris Kearns Goodwin '64, who, he notes, was a government major: "Alan is more solidly entrenched as a member of the profession. He was my best student in terms of the pleasure of working and talking with him." Raymond was equally impressed with Taylor's teaching during a one-year stint in 1984-85 when they both taught at Colby. They still talk history intensely, "even when he's gone way beyond my ability to contribute to his knowledge," Raymond said.
When Taylor received an honorary doctorate from Colby in 1997 he spoke fondly of his old professor. "I'd like to believe that it's all true," said Raymond, though he does claim one bit of influence. "I rarely advise my students to do anything, but when I found he was under some family pressure to go to law school, I decided to say something." Pointing out Taylor's uncanny research abilities, "I told him he had something that's really unusual, a rare gift."
Research remains at the heart of Taylor's historical enterprise, though he succeeds with engaging narrative and memorable characters as well. In an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Harvard's Ulrich mentioned that, when she first met and befriended Taylor, he was doing research--and living in a tent.
True, says Taylor. A purely practical arrangement; a way for a graduate student to economize. He was studying early-19th-century town and county records from the border of what was then the district of Maine--work that led to his doctoral dissertation and his first book, Liberty Men and Great Proprietors. He haunted public libraries by day and campgrounds at night. "After all, it was summer in Maine," he said. "Lots of people camp out."
Taylor rarely seems impressed by his own research feats. One of the more intriguing, in William Cooper's Town, involves an analysis of Cooper's electoral popularity as the town spread. By analyzing 19th-century voting records (voters' preferences were then public), Taylor shows that the farther from the village a voter lived, the less likely he was to support Cooper. Asked about that discovery, Taylor said it was no big deal.
"That's Alan all over," Ulrich said. In retrospect, it may look easy, but "it involves hundreds of hours of going through census records, town by town. And of course it requires a keen analytical mind to phrase the question to get the answer you want," she said.
An archive that was an essential source for William Cooper's Town represents another facet of Taylor's abilities--people skills. Taylor had been curious about the Coopers since his own boyhood when he read The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper--in large part, a fictionalized account of the life of Cooper's father, William. But unlike most 19th-century documents, which repose in public archives, the Cooper family papers were still in the hands of a lineal family descendant, Paul Fenimore Cooper Jr.
Paul Cooper had been approached by scholars but had turned down their sometimes high-handed requests for access. He hoped to write a book himself and, in fact, made several false starts. By the time Taylor approached him, Cooper was 70 and doubtless realized he would never write the book. He gave Taylor a tour of the collection, which, Taylor quickly realized, was a historical treasure.
Once the ice was broken, Cooper warmed to the younger man. "By the end of the week, he had practically adopted me," Taylor said. Cooper eventually gave full access, asking only that Taylor not write about William Cooper's storekeeping or maple sugaring--subjects about which Cooper still hoped to write articles. Paul Cooper died only a few months later. The papers were given to Hartwick College and, after a suitable interval, Taylor resumed his research with a plan for the book already in hand.
Among the papers sent to Hartwick, Taylor eventually saw the drafts Paul Fenimore Cooper had written. "It was kind of sad," Taylor said. "He always got stuck at the same place--a classic case of writer's block."
Asked whether he ever suffered from the malady, Taylor said, "Thank God, no." To the contrary, he writes "quickly and a lot," he said--a method that requires much rewriting. He spent almost two years converting his doctoral dissertation into Liberty Men and Great Proprietors, halving its length. For his most recent book, American Colonies, based on secondary sources rather than archives, he worked one chapter at a time.
