1 - The Early Years, 1857–1887

Summary

At Home with Alphonso and Louisa

Chartered as a village in 1802 and incorporated as a city in 1819, Cincinnati by 1843 had become a typical Midwestern urban center. Already the city featured macadamized roads, a canal and railroad system, and a bustling waterfront replete with daily arrivals of cargo and passengers. In mid-century, it was home to meat packers, brewers, dry goods merchants, book sellers, printers and publishers, physicians, and above all, lawyers, who easily outnumbered all the other occupations. Names such as Wurlitzer, Proctor, and Gamble attested to the city’s success as a magnet for new commercial enterprise, while, increasingly, well-known politicians such as Salmon P. Chase affirmed its relevance as a community replete with significant discussions/meetings on national political issues such as the tariff, internal improvements, temperance, abolition, and the looming threat of civil war. By the 1870s, its population had reached more than 200,000. Numerous houses of worship dotted the greater Cincinnati area, and the city even boasted of a growing line of suburbs that had sprung up among the seven hills that surrounded the downtown area.

One of these suburbs was known as Mt. Auburn, where late in 1853 a young lawyer and widower, Alphonso Taft, resided. His first wife had died in 1852, leaving him with two young sons. Barely eighteen months later, Taft remarried. The resulting family included five more children, of whom four survived. The oldest son, William Howard Taft, was born in 1857. Throughout their lives, the five Taft brothers – Peter and Charles (from their father’s first marriage), William, Henry, and Horace – formed with their wives the nucleus of a surprisingly close family network. As will be seen, the influence of his family upon William (the subject of these chapters, and familiarly known as Will) should not be underestimated.