Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 10.djvu/137

 THAYER

THAYER

titCau (m/(!^^

Thaxter was an assistant instructor in biology in Harvard college, 1886-88, assistant professor of cryptogamic botany, 1891-1901, and full professor after 1901. After her marriage, Mrs. Thaxter still made Appledore her home, but spent the winters in Boston, traveling abroad in 1880. Her husband died in 1884, and was buried at Kittery, Maine, the bowlder placed at his grave bearing an in- scription written for it by Browning, whose poems Mr. Thaxter had for many years inter- preted. After lier husband's death Mrs. Thaxter spent the winters in Ports- mouth, but her house at Appledore was during the rest of the year the meeting-place of her distinguished friends, among whoni were James T. Fields, John G. Whittier, John Knowles Paine, Arthur Whit- ing, J. Appleton Brown, Childe Hassam, Sarah Orne Jewett and many other authors, musicians and artists. Her first verses, which she sent to a friend, were handed to James Russell Lowell, then editor of the Atlantic Monthly, who chris- tened them " Land-locked " and published them in the magazine in 1861. This poem was followed in 1867 by the prose serial Among the Isles of Shoals, which was published in book form, 1873. She is also the author of: Poems (1872); Drift- tcood, poems (1879); Poems for Children (1884); The Cruise of the Mijstery. and other Poems, and Idylls and Pastorals (1886); Aii Island Garden (1894), and of ^-i J/(2mo?'a6Ze Murder in "Stories by American Authors" (1884). She died on Appledore i:,land. Isles of Shoals, Aug. 26, 1894.

THAYER, Amos Madden, jurist, was born in Mina, N.Y., Oct. 4, 1841; son of Ichabod and Fidelia (La Due) Thayer; grandson of Col. Ichabod and Lucretia Thayer, and of Joshua and Julia (Cowles) LaDue, and a descendant of Thomas Thayer, who settled at Braintree, Mass., 1630. He attended the district schools and the academies at Mayville and Westfield, N.Y.; was graduated from Hamilton college, Clinton, N.Y., A.B., 1862; subsequently recruited a company of volunteers for the 112th New York regiment, of which he was commissioned lieutenant, and was soon after promoted to the U.S. signal corps under Gen. A. J. Myer, serving until the close of the war, when he was mustered out as brevet-major. He set- tled in St. Louis, Mo., in 1866, was admitted to the bar in 1868, and elected circuit judge for the

K ^i?

city of St. Louis, serving, 1876-86. He was mar- ried, Dec. 22, 1880, to Sidney Hunton, daughter of Alexander and Sidney (January) Brother of St. Louis. He was appointed U.S. district judge of the eastern district of Missouri, serving, 1887- 94, and was promoted to the office of U.S. circuit judge, 8th circuit, in August, 1894, which office he still held in 1903. The honorary degree of LL.D. was couferreil upon him by Hamilton col- lege in 1892.

THAYER, Eli, representative, was born in Men- don. Mass., June 11, 1819; son of Cushman and Miranda (Pond) Thayer; grandson of Benjamin and Ruth (Alden) Thayer, and of Eli and Hannah (Daniels) Pond, and a descendant of Thomas Thayer, who settled in Braintree, Mass., 1630, and of Jolm Alden of the May- floicer. Eli Tliayer attended the district scliools, the acade- mies at Bellingham and Amherst, Mass., and the "Worcester Manual Labor school; taught school in Douglas, Mass., 183o- 36; assisted his fatlier in a country store at Millville, 1836-40, and while a student at Brown university, from which lie was graduated, A.B., 1845, A.M., 1848, taught school in Hopkinton, R.I., 1842, and had charge of the boys' high school in Providence in 1844. He was an instructor in Worcester academy, 1845-48; studied law under Judge Plim* Merrick, but did not practise, and in 1848 founded the Oread insti- tute, a school for young women, which was com- pleted in 1852, and which he conducted until 1857. He was made a meinber of the Worcester school board in 1852; was an alderman of the city, 1852- 53, and a representative in the general com-t of Massachusetts, 1853-54, introducing the bill to incorporate the Bank of Mutual Redemption, and in March, 1854, divulging his plan to settle the territorial contest, which had resulted from the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, with emigrants from the free states. Li April he secured a charter for the Massa- chusetts Emigrant Aid company, which became the New England Emigrant Aid company, with a capital limit of $5,000,000. By means of lectures, speeches and published articles, with the aid of Amos A. Lawrence, who furnished money, he carried on the propaganda, which Horace Greeley called " The Plan of Freedom." An advance colony of antislavery settlers set out for Kansas

i^^