Ezra W. Taft

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

Ezra W. Taft

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.[4] He moved to Dedham in 1815 and went to work with Frederick A Taft who started the Dedham Manufacturing Company.[4] He remained in Dedham until 1820.[4] 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.[4] In 1823, he went to Dover, New Hampshire and assisted in starting the Cocheco Mill, one of the largest cotton mills in New England.[4] He remained three years as overseer.[4]

In 1826, he returned to Dedham and took the agency of the Dedham Manufacturing Company, a position he retained six years.[4] 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.[4] He remained in this connection thirty years.[4] 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.[4] He lived to witness the development of the new woolen mill, described as one of the wonders of the nineteenth century.[4] In 1864, Mr Taft retired from manufacturing and after that time devoted himself almost continuously to the business of the Town of Dedham.[4]

For more thirty years he was a member of the school committee.[4] For thirty one years he was a director of the Dedham Bank, including as president beginning in 1873.[4] He was connected with the Dedham Institution for Savings since its organization and was on the investment committee.[4] He was also a member of the Norfolk Insurance Company and a director in the Dedham Mutual Insurance Company.[4] He was for fourteen successive years a Dedham selectmen, during twelve of which he was chairman of the board.[4] He also represented Dedham for four years in the Legislature besides filling many other positions of honor and trust.[4] It was said that no citizen of the town of Dedham had been so continuously connected with bank and town business as Taft.[4]

Taft was a member of the Orthodox Church in Dedham and a Republican.[4] On September 8, 1830, Taft married Lendamine Draper, the eldest daughter of Calvin Guild of Dedham.[4] Their family consisted of six children.[4]