“I leave nothing to my legal heirs.” With these terse words at the beginning of his three-page last will and testament, Elihu Taft served notice on his relatives that this was not going to be business as usual.

Born in 1847 to Williston farmers, Elihu Barber Taft graduated from the  University of Vermont and became a successful Burlington lawyer, including City Attorney for Burlington. An amateur naturalist and outdoorsman — Taft Lodge on Mt. Mansfield was his gift — Taft was also a world traveler, lecturer and philanthropist. He served on the Burlington Board of Aldermen for 12 years, eight as its president, was a member of the Burlington School Board for six years, and was a Republican State Senator.

He was also, inadvertently, a troublemaker. More than 65 years after his death, Taft continues to cause mischief.

The City of Burlington, through its School Board, has struggled for 15 years with Taft’s legacy: the aging school building at the corner of Pearl and South Williams streets. It costs a fortune to heat and is no longer needed as a school, but can’t be sold because of a restriction in its donor’s will. It has become, in other words, a white elephant. Meanwhile, Taft’s ultimately intended beneficiaries, “indigent aged men” — in today’s parlance, homeless, elderly men — are still waiting to claim their rightful inheritance. Elihu (pronounced ell-uh-hue) surely never dreamt what troubles he was starting.

In the latest twist to this saga, City Attorney Joe McNeil announced a possible legal loophole: a way for the City to unload the old Taft School without incurring the “reversion clause.” Last week former school commissioner John Barrows and this writer appeared before the School Board to counsel caution about any use of loopholes. (Board Chairperson Carol Ode stressed that the current full board — as opposed to its finance committee — has never taken up the question of selling the Taft  School.) A recent Burlington Free Press editorial, meanwhile, argued against any sale of the building and in favor of exploring a “mixed-use compromise” that would include housing for the homeless.

How did Taft’s generosity — to his city and to homeless men — ever come to this? In 1875, a week after his 28th birthday, Elihu Taft married Lucia Johnson. He and his bride set up housekeeping in the Old North End, but Lucia died of “consumption” — pulmonary tuberculosis — later the same year.

Taft had no offspring and never remarried. For nearly 40 years he lived with his maiden aunt, Antha Taft, at 197 Pearl Street, and when she died in 1916, Antha willed the house and the bulk of her estate to her nephew Elihu. His own health began to fail about 10 years later. 

Taft wrote his will in January 1927 — two years before his death. After providing for a granite monument at Lakeview Cemetery and for “perpetual care and adornment” of his cemetery lot, he left to the City of Burlington his property and the rest of his relatively modest fortune “with which to build a school house on my homestead lot” — to be named “The Elihu B. Taft School.”

Taft provided a description of the school to be built: “a plain and substantial building of red brick…trimmed with Barre granite.” He suggested “a one- or two-story building with no tower or belfry, as the funds on hand will permit.” Taft, whose homestead had been noted for its prolific gardens, added, “I trust the School Commissioners will maintain a bed of flowers in front of said school building, both on Pearl and on Williams Street.”

But the real kicker was this: a restriction that if the City ever ceased to use it for school purposes, the property “and any buildings at any time standing thereon” were to revert to his executors “for the founding, erection, maintenance and endowment of a home for indigent aged men, to be known as ‘The Elihu B. Taft Home For Aged Men.’”

Precisely what Taft had in mind is not hard to deduce: a counterpart for men to Burlington’s “Home for Aged Women.” Built in 1888, that institution survives to this day as the Converse Home on lower Church Street. 

(A much wealthier Burlington philanthropist, J. J Flynn, made a similar bequest in his will written 10 years after Taft’s death. Flynn willed his home at 251 South Willard Street to the City “to be used for an Old Men’s Home and not otherwise, and to be known as the Flynn Home For Aged Men.” But, even though he provided for no alternative, Flynn was ultimately no more successful in founding such a home. In due time the City said “no thank you” to Flynn’s bequest and the property reverted to his estate.)

Taft’s bequest has generated numerous difficulties over the years:

  • A niece contested the will — and later dropped her case.
  • After trying to build a Municipal Court building instead (an option Taft had allowed for in a codicil to his will), the city fathers voted to accept his gift for a school. They did so tardily and with obvious misgivings — because Taft’s “fortune” was not really large enough to cover the cost of building a school.
  • A court fight ensued over whether the estate had to pay an inheritance tax on the gift to the City for educational purposes. The estate lost.
  • Finally built in 1938, the Taft School served neighborhood children for over 40 years. But in the ’80s student enrollment declined and the school was closed.
  • Then the School Board, struggling to keep school taxes down, attempted to sell the building and came smack up against Elihu Taft’s will restriction. The City went to Probate Court for a ruling as to whether its current use of the building — partly for school purposes and partly for renting out to various agencies — ran afoul of Taft’s will.

Judge L. John Cain appointed the Vermont attorney general’s office to represent “the uncertain beneficiaries of the Taft Estate”: indigent aged men. Finally Judge Cain concluded in 1987 that “the present and proposed uses of the Taft School building are consistent with [Taft’s] intent that his property be kept and maintained and used by the City of Burlington for school purposes.”

  • Twice in the 1980s, homeless men — the not-so-uncertain “beneficiaries of the Taft Estate” — staged sit-ins and were arrested in the corridors of Taft School. 
  • And earlier this month, an attorney in McNeil’s office rediscovered the codicil to Taft’s will and interpreted it as possibly negating the will’s provision that the property would revert to the estate if it ceased to be used for school purposes. At last, it seemed, the School Board might have a way out of its dilemma.

But a close reading of the codicil — written in October 1928, less than three months before Taft’s death — seems to indicate that, logically if not legally, it offers no such solution for the City. The codicil’s primary purpose was to offer the City the option, if it didn’t build a school, of accepting up to $60,000 to build a courthouse, with the rest of the estate going for Taft’s home for indigent men.

Otherwise the codicil only reinforces Taft’s clarity of purpose: If neither schoolhouse or courthouse were built, “then it is my will that all of my estate, both real and personal, be used by my Executors” for the establishment of the Taft home.

If the School Board wants to unload its white elephant, it could try a new approach: facing squarely Elihu Taft’s intent and the deal the City made accepting his bequest. In this  time of widespread homelessness and a shrinking federal and state safety net, a task force — including homeless and low-income people and their advocates, community leaders and developers — could be appointed to assess feasible options for the “plain and substantial building of red brick” that now broods on the corner where Elihu’s gardens once bloomed.