He was a grandson of Attorney General and Secretary of War Alphonso Taft, and the elder son of President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft and Helen Louise "Nellie" Herron. His younger brother Charles Phelps Taft II served as the Mayor of Cincinnati and was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for Ohio Governor in 1952. As a boy he spent four years in the Philippines, where his father was governor. He was first in his class at the Taft School (run by his uncle), at Yale College (1910), and at Harvard Law School (1913). He was a member of Psi Upsilon, his father's fraternity and Skull and Bones, and edited the "Harvard Law Review". In 1913, Taft scored the highest in the state on the Ohio bar exam. He then practiced for four years with the firm of Maxwell and Ramsey (now Graydon Head & Ritchey LLP) in Cincinnati, his family's ancestral city. After a two-year stint in Washington working for the Food and Drug Administration, he returned to Cincinnati and opened his own law office. In 1924 he and his brother, Charles, helped form the law partnership Taft, Stettinius, and Hollister with which he continued to be associated until his death and continues to carry his name today. On October 17, 1914, he married Martha Wheaton Bowers (1889–1958), daughter of Lloyd Wheaton Bowers and Louisa Bennett Wilson. Taft himself appeared taciturn and coldly intellectual, characteristics that were offset by his gregarious wife, who served the same role his mother had for his father, as a confidante and powerful asset to her husband's political career. In May 1950, Martha suffered a severe stroke that left her an invalid, leaving her confined to a wheelchair, unable to take care of herself, and reliant upon her husband, children, and nurses for support. A biographer called his wife's stroke "the deepest personal blow of [Taft's] life ... there was no denying that he suffered." Following her stroke, Taft faithfully assisted his wife, called her every night when he was away on business, read stories to her at night when he was at home, "pushed her about in her wheelchair, lifted her in and out of cars ... tenderly did his best to make her feel comfortable and happy, and helped feed and take care of her at public functions" - facts which, his admirers noted, belied his public image as a cold and uncaring person.