Several generations of Tafts have been influential in American politics since the Civil War years (1861-65). Alphonso Taft was a prominent Ohio attorney and Republican who served as secretary of war and attorney general under President Ulysses S. Grant and as minister to Austria- Hungary and then Russia under President Chester A. Arthur. His son, William Howard Taft, served as president and as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. William Howard's son Robert Alphonso Taft was born in 1889, shortly before Alphonso Taft died. He served in the U.S. Senate from 1938 until his death in 1953. His son, Robert Alphonso Taft Jr., served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives during the 1960s, and one term in the U.S. Senate during the 1970s. In 1998, Bob Taft, son of Robert Taft Jr., grandson...