William Howard Taft National Historic Site

We visited the William Howard Taft National Historic Site over a week ago... on Thursday, September 13. I've had so many pictures to go through that I'm behind on my reporting of all of our activities!

We have enjoyed visiting Presidential Libraries and Historic Sites as we travel. I like learning history this way, a little at a time, no need to prepare for a test, just remember what I found interesting! I didn't know much about Taft, but learned a bit while we visited his childhood home in Cincinnati.

The home was on Auburn Avenue - up the hill from downtown Cincinnati where his father was a judge.

Several of the rooms in the home are only open to visitors while being guided by a Park Ranger. Our Ranger told us that correspondence by members of the family helped them to recreate the furnishings in the home according to the way it was furnished at the time that the Taft family lived here. The piano, as an example, was an object described in a letter, as was its placement between the two doors in the drawing room (which had been two rooms prior to the Tafts living in the home).

Oh! The ranger asked a lot of questions of the tour group, and if you knew the answer, he gave you a Junior Ranger badge - so I got my FIRST (and ONLY) Junior Ranger Badge!

I honestly don't remember the question, but the answer was "the Dred Scott Decision". The question had something to do with, "even though Ohio was not a slave state, why might slaves be seen in the streets of Cincinnati in the 1850s?" It was due to slave owners from Kentucky having their slaves with them when they came to Cincinnati, and that the slaves were still considered slaves even if their owners took them to non-slave-owning areas, due to the ruling by the Dred Scott Decision. Don't be impressed that I knew all that... I made a lucky guess!

The Tafts had gas lighting in their home.

Judge Taft's (William Howard's father's) desk in the corner

Who do you think is in the picture?

 If you guessed Shirley Temple (as I did), you would be wrong. Of course, it is William Howard Taft!

William Howard Taft's lifetime of public service

President (Teddy) Roosevelt endorsed Taft in his run for the presidency in 1908

I found it interesting that candidates did not attend their party conventions in 1908! So Taft learned of his nomination by telephone.

The results of the election of 1908.

Although Taft's wife, Nellie Herren Taft, had looked forward to being first lady, she suffered a stroke early during his first year as president so was limited in her official activities.

Theodore Roosevelt endorsed Taft for president, but Taft did not govern as Roosevelt anticipated that he would.

First President to open the baseball season by throwing out the first pitch.

There is evidently a "tall tale" that Taft got stuck in the White House bathtub and had to be helped out of it. The Ranger who took us on tour said that the reality was that his knees were painful and he asked for help to get up due to that. But... the White House did get a new tub during his tenure.

Roosevelt didn't approve of Taft's administration and thus ran against him on a third party ticket in 1912....

... thus splitting the party.

As a result, the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, won the presidency.

Taft is the only President...

... who also served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

But... before he was appointed to the Supreme Court, Taft went back to citizen life as a professor at Yale Law School.

I did not realize that the position of Chief Justice was part of the Supreme Court appointment (I thought that somehow Chief Justices were "elected" from by the members of the Supreme Court from their number - I'm not sure how I got that idea, other than it seems like it would make sense that the Chief Justice would not be someone new to the Supreme Court).

I thought it was interesting that the existence of the Supreme Court Building is a relatively recent occurrence. Also, that prior to Taft's service as Chief Justice, the Supreme Court was required to consider/hear all cases brought to them - there was no decision making process of whether a case was worthy to be heard by the Supreme Court.

As we have found in our other visits to Presidential sites, we learned interesting things about Taft and the things that went on during his administration.

I found this article from another person who had visited the site and written up about their visit to be interesting: https://www.cleveland.com/travel/index.ssf/2016/04/sizing_up_william_howard_taft.html