Background on the Charles Phelps Taft Memorial Fund

The Charles Phelps Taft Memorial Fund dates back to 1930 when Charles Phelps Taft’s widow, Annie Sinton Taft, established the fund in his memory to support the study of the humanities.  Her original letter detailing the gift states that it was “to assist, maintain and endow the study and teaching of the Humanities in the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.”

Annie Sinton Taft made the gift of $2 million because she was concerned about the imbalance she saw between great support for the material betterment of mankind and that for the value of thought, conduct and character.  It was a gift her husband would have approved of.  During his life time, Charles Phelps Taft had studied Greek and Latin and traveled abroad extensively, acquiring a proficiency in German and French along with a finely honed appreciation for European culture. 

That original 1930 donation for the humanities was paralleled by a separate endowment specifically for classics from William T. and Louise Semple (William was a UC professor of classics, and Louise was the daughter of Charles and Annie Sinton Taft) and from Margo Tytus, currently a trustee of the Charles Phelps Taft Memorial Fund.  In relation to the Taft House at Stratford Heights, support from the Semple and the Tytus gifts will help fund the residency of Classics Visiting Scholars in the house.

The Charles Phelps Taft Memorial Fund has come to encompass 10 departments in UC’s McMicken College of Arts & Sciences. 

• Anthropology
• Economics
• English
• Germanic Languages & Literatures
• History
• Mathematical Sciences
• Philosophy
• Political Science
• Romance Languages & Literatures
• Sociology