by Mike Sanfilippo

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Marcus Lorenzo Taft graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan in 1873. He received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from the Drew Theological Seminary in 1877, and a Doctor of Divinity degree from Wesleyan in 1893. Taft studied abroad at the German Universities of Leipzig, Bonn, and Heidelberg for two years from 1877-79. In 1880 he joined the New York East Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and began missionary work in China. He would spend the next thirty years in China: at Kiu-Kiang 1880-82; Chin-Kiang, 1882-84; Tientsin, 1884-85, 1890-91, 1896-99, 1905-07; Peking, 1885-88 and 1891-94; and Changli, 1907-09. From 1892-94, he also served as Professor of Historical Theology at the Wiley School of Theology, Peking University. Taft retired from missionary work in 1913 but went on to serve as Professor of Missions at Atlanta Theological Seminary, Georgia, until 1921.

Taft was married twice. His first wife, Emily Kellogg, of St. Louis, Missouri, died in 1902. They had been married almost twenty years and had three children, one of whom died shortly after birth. He remarried in 1905 to Mary Swail Wilkinson, a widow from Herkimer, New York. They had two children.

Taft was the author of Strange Siberia Along the Trans-Siberian Railway; a Journey from the Great Wall of China to the Skyscrapers of Manhattan which was published in 1911. He died on October 18, 1936, in Pasadena, California.

 

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Last updated: 02/02/05

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