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Edward Thompson Taylor, 1793-1871
Known for delivering inspirational sermons laced with nautical imagery to sailors and their families at Seamen's Bethel Church in Boston, Methodist preacher Edward Thompson Taylor earned the admiration of many beyond his congregation. Ralph Waldo Emerson described him as "the living Methodist, the Poet of the Church," and Walt Whitman spoke of his "inexhaustible fund of volcanic passion." This daguerreotype captures Taylor at the height of his fame and was created within a year or two of the publication of Herman Melville's Moby Dick (1851), for which "Father Taylor" served as the model for the fictional preacher Father Mapple.
Unidentified daguerreotypist, c 1853 |