Seth Chase Taft (b. December 31, 1922) served as a Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Commissioner from 1971 until 1978. He is the grandson of American president William H. Taft and son of Cincinnati mayor Charles Phelps Taft II. He grew up with five sisters and one brother in Cincinnati, Ohio. After serving in the United States Navy during World War II, he married Frances Prindle on June 19, 1943 and began a successful 40-year-long law career as an attorney specializing in business law for the firm Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue in Cleveland.
In addition to his legal career, Taft was involved with politics for many years. His public career included an unsuccessful Republican candidacy for mayor of Cleveland in the1967 race against Carl Stokes and his position as a Cuyahoga County Commissioner. Taft was heavily involved with political and community activities from the 1950s to the 1980s, including the reformation of the Cuyahoga County Charter in the 1950s and 1960s, urban and lakefront development in Northeast Ohio, and the Greater Cleveland Scholarship-In-Escrow Taskforce, for which Taft served as a member of the Board of Trustees. In 1982 he sought the Republican nomination for the race of governor of Ohio, but he lost it to Clarence J. "Bud" Brown, Jr.
From the guide to the Seth Taft Papers, 1933-2008, (Western Reserve Historical Society)
