Ezra W. Taft
Ezra W. Taft (born August 26, 1800) was a politician from Dedham, Massachusetts. He represented the Massachusetts House of Representatives' 1st Norfolk district in the Great and General Court.[1][2]
Taft was born to Frederick and Abigail Wood Taft in Uxbridge, Massachusetts on August 26, 1800.[3] Early in life he commenced that business activity which became characteristic of the man.[3] He moved to Dedham in 1815 and went to work with Frederick A Taft who started the Dedham Manufacturing Company.[3] He remained in Dedham until 1820.[3] 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.[3] In 1823, he went to Dover, New Hampshire and assisted in starting the Cocheco Mill, one of the largest cotton mills in New England.[3] He remained three years as overseer.[3]
In 1826, he returned to Dedham and took the agency of the Dedham Manufacturing Company, a position he retained six years.[3] 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.[3] He remained in this connection thirty years.[3] 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.[3] He lived to witness the development of the new woolen mill, described as one of the wonders of the nineteenth century.[3] In 1864, Mr Taft retired from manufacturing and after that time devoted himself almost continuously to the business of the Town of Dedham.[3]
For more thirty years he was a member of the school committee.[3] For thirty one years he was a director of the Dedham Bank, including as president beginning in 1873.[3] He was connected with the Dedham Institution for Savings since its organization and was on the investment committee.[3] He was also a member of the Norfolk Insurance Company and a director in the Dedham Mutual Insurance Company.[3] He was for fourteen successive years a Dedham selectmen, during twelve of which he was chairman of the board.[3] He also represented Dedham for four years in the Legislature besides filling many other positions of honor and trust.[3] It was said that no citizen of the town of Dedham had been so continuously connected with bank and town business as Taft.[3]
Taft was a member of the Orthodox Church in Dedham and a Republican.[3] On September 8, 1830, Taft married Lendamine Draper, the eldest daughter of Calvin Guild of Dedham.[3] Their family consisted of six children.[3]
References
Works cited
- Hurd, Duane Hamilton (1884). History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts: With Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men. J. W. Lewis & Company. Retrieved May 2, 2021.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.