Issue Date: June 4, 1930
First City: Cincinnati, Ohio
Quantity Issued: 662,956,900
Printed by: Bureau of Engraving and Printing
Printing Method: Rotary press
Perforation: 11 X 10 ½
Color: Brown

U.S. # 685 pictures U.S. President William Howard Taft. The stamp was issued four months after his death. The Post Office Department announced it would be released on his birthdate and in his hometown. The vignette shows Taft in the judicial robe he wore as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The 4¢ Taft stamp was the only one in the Series of 1922-35 printed only on a rotary press, never on a flat plate press.

 

Before being elected as our twenty-seventh President, William Howard Taft also served as Secretary of War under Theodore Roosevelt. Although Roosevelt had chosen Taft as his successor, he later disapproved of Taft’s policies and ran against him on the Bull Moose ticket in the 1912 election. The Republican vote was split, and Wilson was elected our twenty-eighth President. After leaving the White House, Taft went on to become a professor of law at Yale University and a U.S. Supreme Court Justice – the only U.S. President to do so.