NATHANIEL TAFT, Matamoras, Pennsylvania.
Nathaniel Taft was born in Mendon, Massachusetts, March 15, 1825, and attended school until he was 12 years of age. He then engaged in farming for a while, but tiring of that he went farther east and drove a stage for some time between Providence and Worcester. Later he worked at the carpenter trade and then ran a stationary engine for the agricultural works at Blackstone for four years. He began his railroad career as a fireman on the Fitchburg & Worcester road, May 26, 1849, being promoted to engineer January 18, 1850. He left that road in 1856 and took service with the Erie, and was soon placed in charge of a run on passenger trains 1 and 8, which he hauled until 1892. A change in time placed his runs at night and he asked for a day run; he was given what is called the "shop engine" in the Port Jervis yard which he still runs, receiving road pay, as a slight testimonial from the officials of the high regard in which he is held.

On August 17, 1847, Mr. Taft was married to Miss Mahalah A. Damon of West Rutland, Massachusetts, and six children have been born to them, five of whom are living. For fourteen years he ran old engine No. 38, built in the Susquehanna shops, and the engine made but two trips in that time controlled by another engineer; he also ran No. 195 eleven years. Abraham Lincoln rode with Mr. Taft on the engine while on the way to his first inauguration, and General Grant rode with him twice, besides one other President graced his cab with his presence. The late James G. Blaine having heard General Grant speak about riding with Mr. Taft, was anxious to do so, too, and when the opportunity presented itself availed himself of the chance. Mr. Blaine was so well pleased that he asked the privilege to fire for a distance, and permission was accorded. He fired from Deposit to Summit, a distance of seven miles, and then, "sweating like a beaver," he gave it up. The Friday previous to his death Jim Fisk, then president of the Erie, in company with Josie Mansfield, rode with Mr. Taft over the entire Delaware Division.

Mr. Taft has never used tobacco or liquor in any form and is a Royal Templar. He also belongs to the Historical society of Orange County; Port Jervis Lodge No. 54, B. of L. E.; the Masonic and Odd Fellow Lodges of Port Jervis and the Hope Evangelical Church of Matamoras. He is a republican in politics and a strong temperance advocate. On October 12 Mr. Taft finished his forty-third year on Delaware Division of the Erie, and has made a total of 1,650,950 miles in that time.

Excerpted from: "American Locomotive Engineers, Erie Railway Edition," H.R. Romans Editor; Crawford-Adsit Company Publishers, Chicago, IL 1899.

From the October 26, 1878 issue of the Port Jervis Evening Gazette:
On the 15th of October (1878), Mr. Nathaniel Taft had run upon the Erie road 22 years as engineer, and during all that time he has run train One. It is worthy to remark that no passenger was ever killed upon his train. Mr. Taft had run five years as engineer on a Massachusetts road. Dring all this time he has run 989,835 miles.

From the April 26, 1879 issue of the Port Jervis Evening Gazette:
Saturday afternoon of last week engineer Taft was coming down the Summit near Deposit with his engine and train Eight, running at the rate of 40 miles per hour. He had bought a bird-dog at Susquehanna, and was bringing it home on the engine. The dog saw some birds and while the train was running at this high rate of speed it leapt from the cab and after rolling over a few times it gathered itself up and started for the woods. Mr. Taft made arrangements at the first stopping place to secure the return of the dog, and on Thursday he got the dog at Susquehanna and brought it to this village. It does not seem to have been injured by the jump.

From the June 14, 1891 issue of The New York Times
Middletown, NY, June 13 -- Nathaniel Taft, the veteran locomotive engineer who has just been retired from the Erie Railway Company from the more arduous duties of his vocation, has a record of successful and honorable service that is probably without a parallel in the history of railroad operations. Mr. Taft was born at Mendham, Mass. in 1825, and in 1847, after nine months' service as fireman, he began running an engine on the Boston & Worcester Railroad. He left the Massachusetts road in 1856 and entered the service of the Erie Railway, making his home at Port Jervis. For thirty-five years, from 1856 to March 30, 1891, he ran daily first-class passenger trains over the Delaware Division of the road between Port Jervis and Susquehanna, 105 miles, with no break in continuous service except for sickness or brief annual vacations.

In all this period of service Mr. Taft was never once called to account by the Erie officials for neglect of duty, and during his entire term of forty-four years' service as a railroad engineer no passenger on a train run by him was ever seriously injured by any accident to the train. Now, at the age of sixty-six, the Erie Company has relieved him from the arduous duties of passenger train engineer on the main line and given him the lighter place of switch engineer in the Port Jervis yard, where his work permits him to remain constantly with his family.

It is worthy of note that Engineer Taft never drank alcoholic liquors and never used tobacco in any form. He is a member of thirteen different fraternal and benevolent societies, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, etc. He has a wife and eight grown children.

From the January, 1907 issue of Erie Magazine:
Over six feet tall, straight and spare, a bunch of bone and sinew, a perfect type of the down East Yankee, is Nathaniel Taft, of Matamoras, Pa. A face bronzed by eighty-one summers, a complexion clear and genial, his eyes as true and bright as his headlight ever was, this is "Nat" Taft of the Erie Veterans.

Born at Mendon, Mass., March 15, 1825, a son of Reuben Taft and Sarah Steams, he attended the day schools until 12 years of age, when he was considered old enough to help on the farm. From there he went east and drove a stage between Providence, R. I., and Worcester, Mass. After this he took up carpentering and then turned to running a stationary engine. On August 17, 1847, he married Mahalah A. Damon, of West Rutland, Mass., and is the father of six children, of whom five are still living.

At the age of 24 he fired his first locomotive on the Fitchburg and Worcester Railroad, going to work the morning of May 26, 1849. His hand which has held the throttle so long and so successfully since then has never been unsteadied by a single glass of intoxicating liquor, nor have those iron nerves ever been overworked by the use of tobacco in any form. No oath has ever been heard to come from his lips in all these years. He is apparently as good physically as he was on January 18, 1850, when, with the title of Engineer, he proudly jumped into the cab of his first engine. He ran steadily until 1856, when Colonel Phillips, then President of the Fitchburg and Worcester R. R., who had invented a hoop machine used in the manufacture of barrels, which was to be shown in the Crystal Palace, New York, took Mr. Taft to New York with him to run it.

Mr. Taft's story of how he came to work for the Erie, in his own language, is: "While I was at the Crystal Palace, Homer Ramsdell, president of the then New York & Erie Railroad, came in, and while talking with President Phillips said: 'Colonel, I have a strike on my railroad, the men want D. D McCollam, my General Superintendent, discharged, and a rule taken off the books that if a man runs off the switch he would be discharged. But I will let the grass grow between the rails before I will discharge McCollam; but I would like to meet the men half wav, and part of them agree to go to work. "Colonel, he added, Can't you send me a hundred engineers at once?" Mr. Phillips replied: 'No, but here is one of my engineers running this machine for me, perhaps he will go,' and Mr. Ramsdell turned to me and said, "Will you?' and I replied, 'It is just as Mr. Phillips says, but I have a good train at home.' Then Mr. Phillips said: 'Mr. Ramsdell is an old schoolmate of mine and if you will go and help him until he can get some men I will let your fireman run your train until you get back.' Then I replied: 'All right, I will go.' Mr. Phillips wrote me out a pass to Fitchburg and back to New York. Upon my return Mr. Ramsdell met me at the boat landing with a team of horses and took me to the Chambers Street ferry, and there gave me a pass to Dunkirk and return, also a letter to Mr. Hugh Riddle, who was then Superintendent of the Delaware Division. Arriving at Port Jervis, forty-four of us, including passengers, took dinner at the old Delaware House. When we came out after dinner Superintendent Riddle stepped up to me and asked me if I was Mr. Taft. I told him yes. 'Come on up to the office,' he said, 'and I will talk to you.'. When we reached there he told me that the train I came up on was in the switch, without an engineer. Ahead of it was another abandoned train and a third one was up above the old oil house. 'We will couple the three together as far as they will be needed, behind "Old Allegany" (No. 18) and let you pull her the 104 miles into Susquehanna,' he said. But I replied, 'I was never over your road. How will I know when I am coming to a station?' 'Oh,' he answered, 'You run the engine and I will pilot you in,' and with him in the cab on October 12, 1856, I ran my first train, old No. 1, over the Erie and continued without a break until April 20, 1892, making in all my railroad career 1,524,664 miles, my largest month's run being in 1888, when I ran 46,140 miles over the Delaware Division.'"

Mr. Taft ran old 1 and 8 from October, 1856, until 1892, when the run was changed to a night one. and he asked for a day job. From then until he voluntarily retired, he ran the shop engine in the Erie yard at Port Jervis, N. Y. In the fourteen years that he ran the old 38, that was built in the Susquehanna shops, it made but four trips with another engineer at the throttle, and for eleven years he ran No. 105. Abraham Lincoln rode in the cab with Mr. Taft while on the way to his inauguration, and General Grant occupied his fireman's seat twice. James G. Blaine having heard General Grant speak of "Engineer" Taft, took occasion when traveling over this road to get up in the cab, and was so well pleased with his companion that he took off his coat and fired from Deposit to Summit, a distance of seven miles.

At the National Meeting of the Master Mechanics and Railroad Superintendents held in Chicago at the time the railroads were about to be made of standard gauge, Mr. Taft's engine, No. 38, was chosen as the type of the most economical and durable one, a record having been kept at that time of the mileage, repairs, etc., of each engine in the United States, and with Mr. Taft as its caretaker the honor fell to his engine.

When the old bridge (since destroyed) was completed across the Delaware River, between Port Jervis, N. Y., and Matamoras, Pa., the New York & Erie Railroad had but thirty-seven hours left in which to run a train across the same or else forfeit the charter granted it by the State of Pennsylvania to enter that atate. It was then that Superintendent Riddle and the Erie officials were just about wild, for none of their men would take an engine across the hurriedly built skeleton structure. It was left to Mr. Taft, when he came in with old 18, the Allegany, to hold this valuable charter. Coupling on to a train of empties he ran across the bridge into Matamoras, Pa., signed the articles acknowledging that he had on that day and hour run a train across the bridge into Pennsylvania, and the charter was saved for the Erie.

When the N.Y., L.E. & W. R.R. Co. went into the hands of a receiver, that officer could not get possession of the road so long as the mail train ran. All other trains were tied up. The receiver could not interfere with "Uncle Sam" and with this exception the receiver had absolute possession. At that time Mr. Taft held his own switch key and five months' wages were due him and his crew. Every means known was tried by the receiver to oust Mr. Taft from his position and to get possession, but it was not until Mr. Taft had compelled the receiver to agree to pay him and his crew their five months' wages by allowing them two pay-days a month until paid in full, that he would surrender his key and give up possession. The key was immediately returned to him and all these years has been carried by him, until now it is but little more than a shell.

Mr. Taft has never had a serious accident, neither can the loss of a single life be attributed directly to him, and not a single passenger was ever seriously injured on his train. Assuming that it is 25,000 miles around the world this grand old engineer has traveled far enough in his cab to have circled the earth sixty times, with 24,664 miles over, and he has never been suspended for a single day nor has he ever been discharged. This is a record of a faithful, conscientious servant of the "Old Reliable Erie," one of the men who helped the Erie to gain such an enviable reputation.

From the January, 1910 issue of Erie Railroad Magazine (Port Jervis News):
Nathaniel Taft, a former Erie engineer, was presented with a handsome jewel commemmorating his fifty years membership in Ustayantha Lodge, IOOF. Mr. Taft will be 85 years old next March.

From the January, 1914 issue of the Locomotive Engineers Journal:
Nathaniel Taft, age 88, retired member of Div. 54, admitted to the Brotherhood Aug. 1, 1868, died of paralysis on Nov. 17, 1913. A $3,000 Brotherhood insurance payment was made to Ray L. Taft, grandson.