Alphonso Taft

Alphonso Taft was an American jurist, diplomat, and politician born on November 5, 1810, in Townshend, Vermont. He was the only child of Peter Rawson Taft and Sylvia Howard. Taft was descended from Robert Taft Sr., who migrated from County Louth, Ireland. His mother, Sylvia Howard, was of Scottish or Irish descent. The Taft family was of modest means but valued education.

Taft attended local schools until age sixteen before teaching school to fund attendance at Amherst Academy. During his time at Amherst, he and Samuel Colt engaged in an incident involving the theft and shooting of a cannon belonging to General Ebenezer Mattoon. He entered Yale College in 1829, graduating in 1833. At Yale, Taft helped establish the secret society Skull and Bones in 1832 alongside William Huntington Russell.

After graduation, Taft taught in Ellington, Connecticut, from 1835 to 1837. He then studied law at Yale Law School, being admitted to the Connecticut bar in 1838 and also serving as a Yale tutor. In 1837, Taft expressed a desire to leave New England, mentioning Vermont as a state to emigrate from. He chose not to practice law in New York due to concerns about its influence of wealth on morality.

In 1839, Taft moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he became a prominent citizen. He served on the Cincinnati City Council and was involved with educational institutions such as the University of Cincinnati, Antioch College, and Yale College as a trustee. He married twice: first to Fanny Phelps in 1841, with whom he had five children, three of whom died in infancy; and after her death in 1852, to Louisa Maria Torrey in 1853. With his second wife, he had five children, including William Howard Taft, who later became the 27th President of the United States.

Taft was active as a lawyer, forming a law firm with Thomas Marshall Key and William M. Dickson in 1854. He was a delegate to the 1856 Republican National Convention and unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives that year. During the Civil War, he supported the Union. From 1866 to 1872, he served as a judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati, where he dissented in a case regarding the reading of the Bible in public schools, arguing for governmental neutrality in religious matters. His dissent was influential in Ohio Supreme Court decisions.

In 1872, Taft became the first president of the Cincinnati Bar Association. That same year, he authored a lease agreement for the Mercantile Library of Cincinnati, considered the world's longest lease at 10,000 years. He also maintained involvement in various educational and legal organizations.

Taft's political career advanced when he was appointed Secretary of War in March 1876 under President Ulysses S. Grant, following the resignation of William W. Belknap amid scandal. His tenure focused on reforming the War Department, reducing military waste, and restoring its integrity. He reordered operational procedures at U.S. military forts and worked to make the army more efficient.

In addition to his role as Secretary of War, Taft served as U.S. Minister to Austria-Hungary from 1882 to 1884, appointed by President Chester A. Arthur. He then served as Minister to Russia in St. Petersburg from 1884 to 1885. Throughout his career, Taft was recognized for his integrity, support for Black voting rights, and efforts to reduce government corruption.

Alphonso Taft died on May 21, 1891. His estate in Mount Auburn, near Cincinnati, has been preserved and is now open to the public as the William Howard Taft National Historic Site.