Louise Taft

Louisa "Louise" Maria Torrey ( born September 11, 1827 in Boston, Massachusetts, † December 8, 1907 in Millbury, Massachusetts ) was the second wife of Alphonso Taft, and the mother of U.S. President William Howard Taft.

Early years

She was the first daughter of Samuel Davenport Torrey (1789-1877) and his second wife Susan Holman Waters ( 1803-1866 ). Her three sisters were Delia Chapin Torry, who married the geologist Edward Orton, Anna Davenport Torrey and Susan H. Torrey. Louisa graduated in 1845 at Mount Holyoke College ( Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before ).

Marriage and family life

Louisa married on December 26, 1853 in Millbury ( Mass.) the widower Alphonso Taft. Thus she became the stepmother of his two surviving sons from his first marriage to Fanny Phelps († 1852), Charles Phelps Taft, who was later the publisher of the Cincinnati Times -Star and 1895-1897 Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Peter Rawson " Rossy " Taft.

The couple had five children together, of whom only four survived to adulthood. The first one died of whooping cough at the age of 14 months, was Samuel Davenport Torrey Taft. The second was the U.S. president William Howard Taft, the next was Henry Waters Taft, a lawyer in New York City, was the fourth was Horace Dutton Taft, founder of the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, and the last was Frances Louis " Fanny " Taft, who married the surgeon William A. Edwards.

The family lived in Cincinnati, Ohio while her husband as a judge at the Superior Court of Cincinnati and then worked in Washington, DC, where he was successively U.S. Secretary of War and Attorney General, as well as U.S. Ambassador to Austria -Hungary and Russia.

She died in 1907 in Millbury, Massachusetts, was then buried in the Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio.