Author: Taylor, Amos
Biography:
TAYLOR, Amos (b 1748: ancestry.com)
Taylor's title-pages, with imprints from all over the northeastern US, describe him variously as teacher, bookseller and publisher, and travelling book-seller. He was born in Groton MA to Amos and Bridget Taylor, who were farmers. He had some basic schooling but failed in two attempts to secure a college education. Nevertheless he began to work as a teacher, at first to very young children. In 1778, in Chelmsford MA, he married Dorothy ("Dolly") Hutchins, with whom he had three children. She died in Reading VT shortly after the birth of the third. Probably Taylor's most successful publication was The Genuine Experience and Dying Address of Mrs. Dolly Taylor (Keene NH, 1794), in which he included a poem of his own composed as he viewed her dead body. Taylor remarried but quarreled with the family of his second wife, whom he attacked in a broadside of 1796, Inestimable Lines of Poetry. Thereafter he appears to have taken to the road, having various titles printed to sell along the way. Most of the biographical information about his early years comes from The Bookseller's Legacy (1802). Several of the titles that were announced may never have actually appeared in print. Most of them were compilations or extracts from the work of others, but his final title, Specimens of Ingenuity (1813), was his own. He probably died not long afterward but no record has been found about the time or place of his death. (ancestry.com 11 Nov. 2020; findmypast.com 11 Nov. 2020; Marcus Allen McCorison, "Amos Taylor, a Sketch and Bibliography," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society [1959] 37-55) HJ