JOHN R. THAYER
THAYER, JOHN R., farmer boy, graduate from Yale, lawyer in Worcester, Massachusetts, city councilman, city alderman, representative in the general court of Massachusetts, state senator, representative from the third district of Massachusetts in the fifty-sixth, fifty-seventh and fifty-eighth Congresses, was born in Douglass, Worcester county, Massachusetts, March 9, 1845. His father, Mowry Richardson Thayer, was a farmer, selectman, school committeeman and a self-reliant, independent and forceful citizen. His mother, Harriet Morse, was the daughter of Chester and Lucy Morse and a woman of healthy religious and moral sentiment. His grandfather, John Thayer, also lived on the farm which had been in the Thayer family for four generations, and married Ruth, daughter of Jeremiah and Ruth Mowry. His first ancestor in America, John Thayer, the great grandfather of John R. came from Scotland to New England in 1732 and settled at Mendon, Massachusetts.
The parents of John R. Thayer both died when he was sixteen years of age, he having previously attended the district school. He then went to live with his uncle, Charles D. Thayer, of Thompson, Connecticut, and attended Nichols academy, Dudley, Massachusetts, where he was prepared for college. He matriculated at Yale in the class of 1869 and was graduated A.B. He then took up the study of law in the office of Judge Henry Chapin of Worcester, Massachusetts, his ambition to become a lawyer having been aroused by attending a justice's court with his father when a boy. He was admitted to the bar in 1871. He served the city of Worcester as councilman, 1874-76, and as alderman, 1878-80, and his native state as a representative in the general court, 1880 and 1881, and as a state senator, 1890 and 1891, at a time when the senatorial district was largely Republican. He was the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for district attorney of Worcester county in 1876, and for mayor of Worcester in 1886. His success at the bar was pronounced; he became known as one of the first lawyers in central Massachusetts, and with his law partner, Arthur P. Rugby, he enjoyed a large and lucrative practice. In
