Zadoc Lovell Taft was a Swanzey carpenter, millwright, mechanic, farmer, and bridge builder, and part of a family with deep colonial roots.
The Taft family arrived in the New World in Braintree, Massachusetts, around 1678, when Robert Taft (c. 1640–1725), Zadoc’s great-great grandfather, emigrated from County Louth, Ireland. He would build the original Taft homestead in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, in 1681.
One branch of the family later moved west to Ohio and produced William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States. Zadoc and the future president were third cousins, twice removed. When Zadoc died in 1866, President Taft was not quite nine years old, so it is unlikely the two ever crossed paths. President Taft did, however, spend summers in nearby Dublin, New Hampshire, between 1910 and 1913 at Knollwood Estate, his so-called “Summer White House,” a detail Zadoc would almost certainly have found more interesting if he had lived to see it.
Zadoc’s branch of the family moved to New Hampshire. Zadoc, sometimes spelled Zadock, was born on April 12, 1786, in Swanzey, to Nathan Taft (1754–1809) and Judith Sibley (1757–1786). Nathan was a Revolutionary War Patriot, serving in the Massachusetts Militia as a private in Captain Lebbeus Drew’s company and Colonel William Shepard’s 4th Continental Regiment in 1781. After the war, Nathan settled his family in the southeast corner of Swanzey, near the L.W. Holbrook place on what is now Old Homestead Highway.
When Zadoc’s mother died shortly after his birth at age 28, he had a four-year-old brother, James Sibley Taft (1782–1854), and a two-year-old sister, Betsey (1784-1854). The History of Swanzey indicates that Nathan had more children after Zadoc; however, no records have been located to substantiate these children or any subsequent marriages for Nathan.
Zadoc was first taxed in Swanzey in 1808 when he lived on the E. K. Aldrich place. The following year, his father died at age 54 at the home of his sister Betsey and brother-in-law, William Park (1782-1867), in Woodford, Vermont.
On March 29, 1810, Zadoc married Italy Ramsdell (1789–1818). She was 21, and Zadoc was 24. They had four children: Giles (1811–1889), a wheelwright, carpenter, and mechanic who spent his life in Swanzey; Lovell (1813–1894), a carpenter and joiner; Farris (1815–1854), a carpenter and mechanic who worked at the Colony Mills in Keene; and Eveline (1817–1831), who died at age 14.
Italy died in 1818, at age 29. Less than a year later, Zadoc married Italy’s sister, Anna Ramsdell (1792–1863), on August 26, 1819. They had six children, including Italy Ann (1820–1828), named for Zadoc’s first wife; Bezaleel (1822–1882), a carpenter and mechanic; Caroline A. (1825), who married James Willard of Keene; Don Carlos (1827–1907), who earned degrees from Amherst College and Union Theological Seminary, and became a professor at the University of Illinois; Samantha Melvina (1829–1848); and Esther Ann (1831-1896), who married Alfred Marble. Don Carlos’s son, Lorado Zadoc Taft (1860-1936), would go on to become one of America’s most prominent sculptors, ensuring that the Taft name remained attached to tools, craftsmanship, and hard work—just in a different medium.
In 1832, the town of Swanzey hired Zadoc to build a covered bridge over the Ashuelot River in West Swanzey, replacing an earlier bridge constructed in 1774. Taft employed a Town Lattice Truss design. The 151-foot bridge rests on a center pier and features partially open sides with decorative portals. Known today as the West Swanzey Bridge or Thompson Bridge, it originally included two pedestrian sidewalks capped with a decorative arch. Only one sidewalk survives. The total cost of construction was $523.27.
Zadoc spent his entire life in Swanzey. He served as town selectman in 1832 and as town representative in 1852. An 1858 map places his home along present-day Old Homestead Highway near Warmac Road, with his son Farris living nearby.
Census and town records reflect a lifetime of steady work. In 1843, Zadoc worked under Lyman Parker and Major Ezekiel Page on the construction of the Mount Caesar Union Library. In 1850, at age 64, his occupation was listed as farmer; by 1860, at age 74, it was millwright, suggesting that slowing down was never part of the plan.
Zadoc Lovell Taft died on November 30, 1866, at age 80, and was buried in Mount Caesar Cemetery. His probate inventory reads like a concise autobiography: oxen, a cow, wagons, farming implements, mechanic’s tools, a chest of tools, and a few personal items, including a cane, spectacles, and a basket. It was not the estate of a president, but it was unmistakably the estate of a working New Hampshire craftsman whose covered bridge still stands as his most visible legacy.
References
Historical photos are a part of the author’s collection.
Read, Benjamin. The History of Swanzey, New Hampshire, from 1734 to 1890. Salem, MA: Salem Press, 1892.
Leave a Reply