Taft family

The Taft family of the United States has historic origins in Massachusetts; its members have served Ohio, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, Utah, and the United States in various positions such as U.S. representative (two), governor of Ohio, governor of Rhode Island, U.S. Senator (three), U.S. secretary of agriculture, U.S. attorney general, U.S. secretary of war (two), president of the United States, and chief justice of the United States. Overview The first known ancestor of the Taft family is Richard Robert Taft, who was born in England in 1614 and died in County Louth, Kingdom of Ireland in 1700, which is also where his son, Robert Taft Sr., was born circa 1640. Robert Taft Sr. would be the first Taft to migrate to what is now the United States. He married his wife Sarah Simpson, who was born in January 1640 in England, in 1668 in Braintree, Massachusetts. Robert Taft Sr. began a homestead in what is today Uxbridge and then Mendon, circa 1680, and which was where he and his wife died in 1725 and 1726 respectively. His son, Robert Taft Jr., was a member of the founding Board of Selectmen for the new town of Uxbridge in 1727. A branch of the Massachusetts Taft family descended from Daniel Taft Sr., son of Robert Taft Sr., born at Braintree, 1677–1761, died at Mendon. Daniel, a justice of the peace in Mendon, had a son Josiah Taft, later of Uxbridge, who died in 1756. This branch of the Taft family claims America's first woman voter, Lydia Taft, and five generations of Massachusetts legislators and public servants beginning with Lydia's husband, Josiah Taft. The Tafts were very prominently represented as soldiers in the Revolutionary War, mostly in the New England states. Peter Rawson Taft I was born in Uxbridge in 1785 and moved to Townshend, Vermont circa 1800. He became a Vermont state legislator. He died in Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio. His son, Alphonso Taft, was born in Townshend, Vermont, and attended Yale University, where he founded the Skull and Bones society. He later was Secretary of War and Attorney General of the United States and the father of President William Howard Taft. Elmshade in Massachusetts was the site of Taft family reunions such as in 1874.