U.S. Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ -- USGenNet Inc. -- Please read the U.S. Data Repository Copyright Statement on the following page: ------------------------------------------------------------------- Taft, Nathan H. (died 1867) ------------------------------------------------------------------- The History of Barbour County, West Virginia, From its Earliest Exploration and Settlement to the Present Time by Hu Maxwell The Acme Publishing Company, Morgantown, W.Va., 1899 Pages 481-482 Nathan H. Taft, a native of New England, located in Philippi about 1848, for the practice of law. Some years later he married Mary E., daughter of Rev. Solomon and Elizabeth Jarvis. In 1862 he moved to Buckhannon, having been elected Prosecuting Attorney of Upshur County. Later he became editor of the Republican, published in Buckhannon. It was the organ of the Conservative party, and opposed the conscriptive methods of the radicals. The paper incurred the enmity of those whom it opposed, and violence was threatened to prevent its publication. But it came out regularly with the assistance of James W. Woffindin, a young newspaper man. Mr. Taft died at Weston, January 3, 1867. He had taken a prominent part in politics during the war. In 1861 he was elected Prosecuting Attorney of Barbour; and the same year was chosen member of the second Wheeling Convention which re-organized the government of Virginia. Early in the same year, when Thomas A. Bradford and Sumuel Woods were candidates for the Richmond Convention, which passed the Ordinance of Secession, Mr. Taft supported Mr. Woods, believing that he was more friendly to a preservation of the Union. When Mr. Woods while a member of the Convention, introduced resolutions declaring the Federal Government ought to recognize the independence of the Seceeded States, Mr. Taft upheld the position taken by Mr. Woods; and in a meeting held in Philippi March 7, 1861, was one of a committee which drafted resolutions sustaining Mr. Woods. When the war actually came, Mr. Taft supported the North. He was in Philippi on June 3 when the Federal artillery opened on the town; and from an attic window (present residence of C. P. Thompson, he watched the Confederates going up the pike, and was heard to exclaim, "Thank God!" He hated slavery, and although he did not wish for war, yet when the war came, he wanted it to stamp slavery out forever. He was instrumental in setting at liberty many persons who had been arrested because of their supposed sympathies with the South. He knew what arrest was, because he had been taken forcably from his own house by Confederates a short time before and had been confined in jail because of his sympathies with the North. As a lawyer, Mr. Taft stood high in the profession, and as an orator, he was eloquent and successful, exercising much influence over a jury. Granville Eskridge Taft, born July 19, 1862, in Taylor County, son of Nathan H. Taft, was married January 10, 1889 to Emma L., daughter of John T. and Rachel B. (Critchfield) Alexander. Children, Cyril Daniel, Lottie Lee, John Hopkins and Rachel May. He is a Baptist, a Mason, an Odd Fellow, a K. of P., an Elk, and a Democrat, He is county clerk of Barbour, elected by a very large majority. He was educated in the public schools, and before he became clerk he was a printer and a railroad agent. ------------------------------------------------------------------- If you've reached this file through a SEARCH, you can access other biographies for Barbour County, WV by going to the following URL: http://www.us-data.org/wv/barbour/bios.html -------------------------------------------------------------------