Samuel Allan Taylor :

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MR TAYLOR was one of the pioneers of stamp collecting in this country and was the publisher of the first American stamp paper, The Stamp Collector's Record, the first number of which was issued in December 1864 at Albany, two numbers having been previously issued at Montreal in February and March of the same year. Had Mr Taylor not fallen into bad practices his name would today be ranked with those of the leading lights of philately for his knowledge of stamps is very great.

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S. Allan Taylor -- Local Fakes
Samuel Allan Taylor well earned his notorious reputation. His long career in stamp dealing, dating from 1863 until 1905, was devoted almost exclusively to counterfeiting, and he fashioned numerous "fantastic" designs of stamps for posts that never existed. A complete collection of his stamps would be about impossible even in the U. S. Local and the semi-official Carriers' issues in which he operated to a great extent. For many years I have been assembling a reference collection of these latter items and the Taylor representation is impressive, but undoubtedly far from complete.

Taylor would make up a Local or a Carrier's stamp and multiple varieties by the use of color and various colored papers, in many shades colored on surface, colored through, glazed, unglazed, wove and laid papers, even "security" papers with concealed protective patterns and watermarks. I lately added to my collection, nearly seven hundred Taylor varieties I didn't have, which included sixty-five or more varieties of paper alone. Probably his full line of Locals and Carriers cannot be found on all these varieties of paper, since he likely had only small supplies of some paper, scrap lots from paper houses.

To my observations the closest he ever came to faking a U. S. stamp was his fantasy based on the Franklin Carrier. The genuine shows a profile of Franklin, facing left, while in Taylor's, Franklin faces to the right with the surrounding frame a crude suggestion of the 1851, 1¢ stamp. It was as near as he dared venture in the imitation of a stamp once authorized by and used by the U. S. Post Office Department. His design reading, "Carrier's Stamp," does not include "U. S.," nor "Postage," but neither did the original, a factor that surely influenced Taylor to create it. It comes in many colors and sometimes we see them offered for sale as "scarce postal essays," but it was just another of Taylor's fakes.

He had a keen sense of humor, evident in many stamps he produced, but he was at all times a cynical faker and seemingly thrived in his profession. He contended that his output was for use as "spacefillers," the genuine being too expensive for the average collector. He circulated his stamps widely and probably his patrons paid little for them but he could work up a a very deceptive job when in the mood. Then the stamp was carefully printed and often a forged or invented postmark was added for a touch of greater "authenticity." A fake of his occasionally seen is the "Albany Letter Express" stamp, modeled with the Pomeroy frame, the Boyd eagle in the vignette. I have it in several colors but one "tied" to a piece of cover with a bogus "Albany Letter Express Paid" postmark in red, looks like the "real thing" might have looked, had there ever been such a Local post.

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Samuel Allan Taylor was born in Ayrshire Scotland in 1838 to Douglas and Agnes Taylor. His father died shortly after his birth, and when his mother died shortly after remarrying he was orphaned.

Left in the hands of strangers he was sent to the United States to live with an uncle. This arrangement did not work and Samuel ran away. He was found and raised by a doctor. At the age of fifteen he became a messanger boy for the New York Telegraph Company. It was here that he learned about posts and began to collect stamps and labels.

In 1861, Samuel Taylor fled to Canada to escape the draft during the Civil War. He would reside in Montreal until the end of 1864, where he worked in a drugstore. It was while he was in Montreal that he began publication of the first stamp journal in North America, The Stamp Collectors Record. While in Montreal, Mr. Taylor met Frances Mathieson and married. They would have three children, one of which would survive, daughter Frances.

Taylor and his wife moved back to the United States, Albany, New York where he would publish the American edition of The Stamp Collectors Record. The family would then move to Boston where Taylor worked as a dispensing clerk at Boston Hospital. It was here that he finished publication of the journal in 1877.

His interest in stamps led him to begin manufacturing and marketing bogus stamps and promotional labels. He died in 1913 in Waltham, Massachusetts.