John Thayer (ornithologist)

John Eliot Thayer (April 3, 1862 – July 29, 1933)[1] was an American amateur ornithologist.

John Eliot Thayer
Born	John Eliot Thayer April 3, 1862 Boston, Massachusetts
Died	July 29, 1933 (aged 71)
Alma mater	Harvard University
Spouse(s)	Evelyn Duncan Forbes ​ ​ (m. 1886; his death 1933)​
Parent(s)	Cornelia Paterson Van Rensselaer Nathaniel Thayer Jr.
Relatives	Bayard Thayer (brother) Nathaniel Thayer III (brother) Stephen Van Rensselaer IV (grandfather)

Early life

Thayer was born in Boston, Massachusetts on April 3, 1862. He was a son of Cornelia Paterson (née Van Rensselaer) Thayer (1823–1897)[2] and Nathaniel Thayer Jr.,[3] a banker who built Harvard's Thayer Hall.[4] Among his siblings were twin brother Bayard Thayer (yachtsman and horticulturalist), older brother Nathaniel Thayer III (a banker and railroad executive), and sister Cornelia Van Rensselaer Thayer (the wife of New York State Senator J. Hampden Robb).[5]

His maternal grandparents were Stephen Van Rensselaer IV (the 10th Patroon and 7th Lord of the Manor of Rensselaerswyck) and Harriet Elizabeth (née Bayard) Van Rensselaer.[6] His paternal grandparents were Sarah Parker (née Toppan) Thayer and the Rev. Dr. Nathaniel Thayer, a Unitarian congregational minister from Lancaster, Massachusetts.[7] Through his father, he was descended from John Cotton, the preeminent minister and theologian of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.[3]

Career

After graduating from Harvard, he married and settled at the family farm at Lancaster, thirty-five miles west of Boston. He became interested in ornithology in the mid-1890s, building up a collection which he housed in a museum in the main street of Lancaster.[8]

He used his wealth to sponsor various natural history expeditions and in 1906 he sent Wilmot W. Brown to Guadalupe Island off Pacific Mexico. Here, Brown, H. W. Marsden and Ignacio Oroso gathered field data on how the natural vegetation was being destroyed by thousands of goats, to the detriment of the native wildlife. The native Guadalupe storm petrel was being predated by introduced cats, as was the Guadalupe flicker. Both birds became extinct shortly afterwards; several other taxa were found to be already gone in 1906.[9] Thayer and Outram Bangs wrote an article in The Condor to draw attention to the situation.[8]

In 1913, Thayer and other Harvard graduates sponsored an expedition to Alaska and Siberia, with Joseph S. Dixon and Winthrop Sprague Brooks as zoological collectors. A gull collected by Brooks on this trip was named Larus thayeri in Thayer's honour.[8]

Thayer became ill in 1928, and donated his collection of 28,000 skins and 15,000 eggs and nests to Harvard.[10] These included the first clutches ever collected of spoon-billed sandpiper and surfbird. After Thayer's death Harvard received his collection of 3,500 mounted birds.[6]

Personal life

On June 22, 1886, Thayer was married to Evelyn Duncan Forbes (1862–1943), a daughter of Franklin Forbes and Martha Ann Stearns (née Cushing) Forbes, in Clinton, Massachusetts.[11] After the marriage, they settled at the family farm at Lancaster. Together, John and Evelyn were the parents of:[12]

• John Eliot Thayer Jr. (1887–1966), a delegate to 1928 Republican National Convention from Massachusetts who married Katherine Lee Bayard Warren, a daughter of Samuel Dennis Warren.[12]
• Evelyn Thayer (1888–1980), who married Isaac Tucker Burr (1885–1972)[12]
• Nora Forbes Thayer (1889–1988), who married Francis Abbot Goodhue Jr.[12]
• Natalie Thayer (1894–1975), who married Lawrence Hemenway (1891–1966).[13]
• Duncan Forbes Thayer (1900–1957), who married Priscilla Pinkney McHenry (1906–1975). After his death, she married Charles Winslow Farnsworth in 1963.[12]

Thayer died on July 29, 1933 in Lancaster and was buried at Old Settlers Burial Yard there.[1]

References

1. "JOHN ELIOT THAYER, ORNITHOLOGIST, DEAD; Collection of Birds, Believed to Largest on Continent, Housed in Mnseam He Donated". The New York Times. 23 July 1933. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
2. "THAYER" (PDF). The New York Times. March 6, 1897. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
3. "NATHANIEL THAYER" (PDF). The New York Times. March 8, 1883. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
4. Wilson & Fiske 1889, p. 73. sfn error: no target: CITEREFWilsonFiske1889 (help)
5. "J. HAMPDEN ROBB, EX-SENATOR, DEAD; Retired Merchant and Banker Was Once Active in Councils of Democratic Party". The New York Times. January 22, 1911. Retrieved 8 November 2016.
6. Spooner, Walter Whipple (1 January 1900). "Van Rensselaer family". American Historical Magazine. [S.l. : s.n. (Vol. 2 Issue 1). Retrieved 8 November 2016.
7. Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1889). "Thayer, Nathaniel" . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton.
8. Thayer, John E.; Bangs, Outram (1908). "The Present State of the Ornis of Guadaloupe Island" (PDF). Condor. 10 (3): 101–106. doi:10.2307/1360977.
9. Ironically, the research team might have hastened the extinction of the flicker by collecting numerous birds and eggs. However, the population would almost certainly have gone extinct even if they hadn't.
10. Mearns, Barbara & Richard (1992): Audubon to Xantus: The Lives of Those Commemorated in North American Bird Names. Academic Press, London & San Diego. ISBN 978-0-12-487423-7
11. Thoreau, Henry David (2018). The Correspondence of Henry D. Thoreau: Volume 2: 1849-1856. Princeton University Press. p. 84. ISBN 978-0-691-18902-4. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
12. Reynolds, Cuyler (1911). Hudson-Mohawk Genealogical and Family Memoirs: A Record of Achievements of the People of the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys in New York State, Included Within the Present Counties of Albany, Rensselaer, Washington, Saratoga, Montgomery, Fulton, Schenectady, Columbia and Greene. Lewis Historical Publishing Company. p. 25. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
13. "Harvard Alumni Bulletin". Harvard Bulletin, Incorporated. 1917: 276. Retrieved 25 August 2020. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

External links

• John Eliot Thayer at Find a Grave