Robert Munson Taylor Papers
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Abstract
Robert Munson Taylor (1913-?) went to Spain in early 1937 to fight with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. He fought in several major battles and suffered some serious injuries. This collection contains mostly wartime correspondence to E. Grace Taylor (whose precise relationship to Robert Taylor is unclear), as well as to several other friends and relatives. There is a small quantity of later correspondence related to his service in Spain, and to surveillance by the Detroit Police Red Squad. Some Spanish Civil War memorabilia and military records are also included in the collection.
Historical/Biographical Note
Robert Munson Taylor (1913-?) went to Spain in January 1937 to fight with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War as a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. During his time in Spain, he suffered a head injury and was at one point mistakenly reported as dead. Taylor fought in several major battles, including those in Villanueva de la Canada and Brunete. The collection includes little information about Taylor's life following the war, but it is apparent that he regularly kept in touch with other Abraham Lincoln Brigade veterans. He was living in Detroit during the summer of 1938 when the local Red Squad raided his house and held him for two days. He was accused of illegally recruiting volunteers for Spain, and a political file was kept on him for the next forty years. In 1940 he was again arrested, this time by the FBI, when crossing the Canadian border into Michigan. By 1990, Taylor (then living in Birmingham, Michigan) had succeeded in obtaining copies of his Detroit Red Squad files.
Sources:
Carroll, Peter N. The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994.)
Arrangement
Arranged alphabetically within the series.
Organized into 1 series:
Missing Title
- I. Correspondence and Memorabilia
Scope and Content Note
Series 1, Correspondence and Memorabilia. The majority of the letters in this collection are from Robert Taylor to E. Grace Taylor and were written between January and July of 1937 when he was abroad in Spain. Several were written during the period he was hospitalized. Most describe the military and political conditions in Spain, along with the situation of his comrades in battle. He describes several encounters with other foreign troops, as well as some pleasurable leisure-time activities. A few letters from this period discussing similar matters are addressed to other friends and family members, whose precise relationship to Taylor is not always clear.
Postwar correspondence is mostly from the 1980s and early 1990s and concerns various efforts to commemorate the Abraham Lincoln Brigade veterans, as well as Taylor's successful attempt to obtain access to his Red Squad files. There is one World War II-era letter from Lincoln Brigade veteran Charles Flaherty to Grace Taylor. The memorabilia in this collection consist of several wartime postcards, and military documentation of Taylor's time in Spain, including his registration records, a Red Cross book, and an officially stamped "military book".
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Access Restrictions
Materials are open to researchers. Please contact the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives for more information and to schedule an appointment, tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu or 212-998-2630.
Use Restrictions
The Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives has no information about copyright ownership for this collection and is not authorized to grant permission to publish or reproduce materials from it. Copyrights held by original creators of individual items in the collection are expected to pass into the public domain 70 years after the creator's death. For more information, please contact the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu or 212-998-2630.
Preferred Citation
Published citations should take the following form:
Identification of item, date; Collection name; Collection number; box number; folder number;
Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012, New York University Libraries.
Provenance
The Robert Munson Taylor Papers came to New York University in January 2001 as part of the original acquisition of ALBA collections, formerly housed at Brandeis University.
Separated Material
Three photographs from the Robert Munson Taylor Papers have been transferred to the Non-Print section of the ALBA collections.
