Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 September 1908 — TAFT COMES FROM GOOD STOCK. [ARTICLE]

TAFT COMES FROM GOOD STOCK.

Family Ranked Among the Plain People for Many Tears. The Tafts—those who at present are the Tafts—hall ancestrally from Uxbridge, Mass. They say that Tafts are so thick in Uibridge that even a woman can’t throw a stone without hitting one. Some years ago—ln 1874, to be exact —there was a Taft reunion in Uxbridge, to which descendanta of the original Robert Taft came flocking from all parts of the country. One of the conspicuous features of the affair was a historical address by Alphonso, Taft, father of the present Republican candidate. He traced the history of various branches of the family, and when he came to the one to which he aud his children belonged he said: “Our family have not embarked much upon national politics, except that they have shared lu the battles of the country when national independence was to be won, and also when the Union was at stake. But brilliant political careers have not been characteristic of the Tafts in the past It is not safe to say what may be in store for them. There is a tide in affairs of men and also of families.” This is taken from the account of ths reunion published at the time. Alphonso Taft would perhaps have been somewhat dazzled if he could have foreseen how quickly and brilliantly the family would proceed to “embark upon national politics.” He himself started the turn of the tide which he predicted. It seems to be reaching Ms flood in the career of the son who that year was entering Yale. As Alphonso Taft described his immediate ancestors one sees where his son got certain characteristics. Peter Taft (1715) was “a large, good-look-ing man of magnanimous disposition.” He bad four sons. Aaron, the candidate’s ancestor, was also so magnanimous that he lost money by indorsing a friend’s notes; he was a man “of great intelligence and integrity.” And then, going somewhat further back, there was Captain William Taft, who took Blarnqy Castle in the sixteenth century “by blarney quite as much as by military prowess.” Good stock was Captain William from which to make a twentieth century Secretary of War William.