Henry W. Taft

Henry Waters Taft. [Born] 1859. Lawyer.

A Centurion for exactly half a Century. His presidency of the New York County Lawyers Association, and of the New York State Bar Association, his chairmanship of the Committee on Jurisprudence and Law Reform of the American Bar Association, show his standing as a lawyers’ lawyer. His membership on the Charter Revision Committee to revise the Charter of Greater New York, on the Commission for the Reorganization of the New York State Government, his chairmanship of the Legal Advisory Board to the Selective Service System in the first World War, testify to his eminence as a lawyer for the public. His membership on the Board of Education of the City of New York, his services as a Trustee of the New York Public Library and of the College of the City of New York, his presidency of the League for Political Education, testify to his sense of responsibility as a citizen. His books, some sharply legal and others delightfully unlegal, his, prescient work for good relations with Japan, his presidency of the University Settlement Society, witness his humanity. “Fate tried to conceal him”,—as Oliver Wendell Holmes said of the man named Smith who wrote “America”—by making him a brother of a President of the United States [William Howard Taft]; but his own qualities of head and heart arranged things far otherwise.

Source: Henry Allen Moe Papers, Mss.B.M722. Reproduced by permission of American Philosophical Society Library & Museum, Philadelphia

Henry Allen Moe
Henry Allen Moe Papers, 1945 Memorials