Ezra W. Taft

Ezra W. Taft (August 26, 1800 – February 8, 1885)[1] was a politician and businessman from Dedham, Massachusetts. He represented the Massachusetts House of Representatives' 1st Norfolk district in the Great and General Court.[2][3]

Taft was born to Frederick and Abigail Wood Taft in Uxbridge, Massachusetts on August 26, 1800.[4] Early in life he commenced that business activity which became characteristic of the man.[5] He moved to Dedham in 1815 and went to work with Frederick A Taft who started the Dedham Manufacturing Company.[5] He remained in Dedham until 1820.[5] In that year, then only twenty years of age, he went to the neighboring town of Walpole where he hired a little mill and made forty thousand yards of negro cloth for the Southern trade.[5] In 1823, he went to Dover, New Hampshire and assisted in starting the Cocheco Mill, one of the largest cotton mills in New England.[5] He remained three years as overseer.[5]

In 1826, he returned to Dedham and took the agency of the Dedham Manufacturing Company, a position he retained six years.[5] In 1832, Taft severed his connection with this company and assumed the agency of the Norfolk Manufacturing Company at East Dedham where he built the stone mill still standing.[5][6] He remained in this connection thirty years.[5] At the time Taft first identified himself with the manufacturing business, all yarn was spun at the mills and sent out through the country to be woven.[5] He lived to witness the development of the new woolen mill, described as one of the wonders of the nineteenth century.[5] In 1864, Mr Taft retired from manufacturing and after that time devoted himself almost continuously to the business of the Town of Dedham.[5]

For more thirty years he was a member of the school committee.[5][6] He was for fourteen successive years a Dedham selectmen, during twelve of which he was chairman of the board.[5][6] He also represented Dedham for four years in the Legislature besides filling many other positions of honor and trust.[5][7] At the end of his tenure as a selectman, he was described as "strictly honest, and a faithful 'watch-dog of the treasury.'"[6]

However, a correspondant to the Boston Globe wrote that "Mr. Taft's weakness, it is said, is a hallucination that he officially owns the town, and he therefor has no delicacy about altering the sense of a petition, it is asserted, signed by tax-payers for insertion in a town meeting warrant."[6] He lost his seat as a selectman in the 1878 election.[7]

For thirty one years he was a director of the Dedham Bank, including as president beginning in 1873.[5][7] He was connected with the Dedham Institution for Savings since its organization and was on the investment committee.[5][7] He was also a member of the Norfolk Insurance Company and a director in the Dedham Mutual Insurance Company.[5][7] It was said that no citizen of the town of Dedham had been so continuously connected with bank and town business as Taft.[5]

Taft was a member of the Orthodox Church in Dedham and a Republican.[5] On September 8, 1830, Taft married Lendamine Draper, the eldest daughter of Calvin Guild of Dedham.[5] Their family consisted of six children.[5] Guild married Taft's sister, Margaret, in 1836.[6]

References

  1. ^ "Recent Deaths". Boston Evening Transcript. February 9, 1885. p. 5. Retrieved March 20, 2023.
  2. ^ "Massachusetts House of Representatives". Massachusetts Register. Boston: Adams, Sampson & Co. 1858. pp. 10–12.
  3. ^ Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Manual for the Use of the General Court. Boston. 1859 – via Internet Archive.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  4. ^ Hurd 1884, p. 106–107.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Hurd 1884, p. 106-107.
  6. ^ a b c d e f Neiswander 2024, p. 41.
  7. ^ a b c d e Neiswander 2024, p. 42.

Works cited

  • Neiswander, Judith (2024). Mother Brook and the Mills of East Dedham. Damianos Publishing. ISBN 978-1-941573-66-2.
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