Fort Western lecture series continues with history author Share AUGUSTA — Award-winning historian and author Alan Taylor is to present “Freedom, Slavery, and Maine Statehood in 1820” at 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 6, at Central Church, 20 Mission Ave. Taylor’s presentation will be the sixth of a series of lectures sponsored by Old Fort Western and the Maine Bicentennial Commission. A 1977 graduate of Colby College, Taylor received his doctorate in American History from Brandeis University in 1986. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Early American History and Culture (Williamsburg, Virginia, 1985-1987), he taught at Boston University, 1987-1994; the University of California at Davis, 1994-2014; and the University of Virginia, where he holds the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Chair, 2014. In 2016-2017 he served as the Harmsworth Professor at Queens College, Oxford University.