Family Roots and Public Service
Bezaleel Taft, Jr., like his father, were descendants of Robert Taft, Sr, the first American Taft, who homesteaded in this town in 1680. Bezaleel Taft, Jr. was the great great grandson of Robert Taft, Sr. His grandmother, Lydia Chapin Taft, was America's First Woman Voter. His grandfather, Captain Josiah Taft, had fought in the French and Indian War. His father was a soldier and a Captain in the Worcester 9th Company, in the American Revolutionary War. The famous Taft family in the USA, began here with Robert Taft, Sr. and among its descendants includes President Taft. Many members of the Taft family have been prominent in State and national politics, having served as judges, legislators, and in Federal Executive and Judicial positions. Bezaleel Taft's grandfather and father also served in the Massachusetts General Court, his grandfather under Colonial rule, and his father, under the new United States.
Read more about this topic: Bezaleel Taft, Jr.
Famous quotes containing the words public service, family, roots, public and/or service:
“Many older wealthy families have learned to instill a sense of public service in their offspring. But newly affluent middle-class parents have not acquired this skill. We are using our children as symbols of leisure-class standing without building in safeguards against an overweening sense of entitlement—a sense of entitlement that may incline some young people more toward the good life than toward the hard work that, for most of us, makes the good life possible.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“At best the family teaches the finest things human beings can learn from one another—generosity and love. But it is also, all too often, where we learn nasty things like hate, rage and shame.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (20th century)
“The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.”
—Denis Waitly. Quoted in The Winning Family, ch. 25, by Louise Hart (1987)
“Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort. Do not talk to him about the interests and rights of the human race; that little private business of his for the moment absorbs all his thoughts, and he hopes that public disturbances can be put off to some other time.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)