Charles Sabin Taft (1835-1900) was born in upstate New York and received medical training at Carroll College in Wisconsin. He enlisted in the Union army in 1861, and was assigned to the medical department, with the rank of assistant surgeon. Dr. Taft practiced at several of the dozens of temporary hospitals established in Washington to treat the thousands of wounded soldiers returning from the front. These included the Church hospital, the Colored Orphan Asylum hospital and the Judiciary Square hospital. At these facilities, he had 80-100 patients under his care, assisted by nurses, and did everything from prescribing treatment to performing amputations. Dr. Taft met President and Mrs. Lincoln as they came to visit wounded soldiers. Dr. Taft and his wife were two of the nearly 1,700 people in attendance at Ford's Theatre in Washington on April 14, when John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer, assassinated President Lincoln. Identifying himself as a surgeon, Dr. Taft was lifted up to the President's box, and along with other army doctors, diagnosed the wound, declared to be mortal. Dr. Taft helped carry Mr. Lincoln to a boardinghouse across the street, and assisted with various medical procedures, such as probing the wound, through the long night. Taft moved to Mt. Vernon in May 1899, and died in December 1900.
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