John Eliot Thayer (April 3, 1862 – July 29, 1933)
was an American amateur
ornithologist.
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)
and
Nathaniel Thayer Jr.,
a banker who built
Harvard's Thayer Hall. Among his siblings were twin brother
Bayard Thayer
Bayard Thayer (1862-1916) was a yachtsman and horticulturalist, and member of the Thayer Family of Lancaster, Massachusetts.
Early life
Born in Boston, Massachusetts on April 3, 1862, he was the grandson of Thayer, and also was the grandson of ...
(yachtsman and horticulturalist), older brother
Nathaniel Thayer III
Nathaniel Thayer (June 13, 1851 – March 21, 1911) was an American banker and railroad executive.
Early life
Thayer was born on June 13, 1851 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the son of Nathaniel Thayer Jr. (1808–1883) and Cornelia Paterson ...
(a banker and railroad executive), and sister Cornelia Van Rensselaer Thayer (the wife of
New York State Senator
The New York State Senate is the upper house of the New York State Legislature; the New York State Assembly is its lower house. Its members are elected to two-year terms; there are no term limits. There are 63 seats in the Senate.
Partisan compo ...
J. Hampden Robb).
His maternal grandparents were
Stephen Van Rensselaer IV (the 10th
Patroon
In the United States, a patroon (; from Dutch '' patroon'' ) was a landholder with manorial rights to large tracts of land in the 17th century Dutch colony of New Netherland on the east coast of North America. Through the Charter of Freedoms ...
and 7th Lord of the
Manor of Rensselaerswyck) and Harriet Elizabeth (née Bayard) Van Rensselaer.
His paternal grandparents were Sarah Parker (née Toppan) Thayer and the Rev. Dr.
Nathaniel Thayer
Rev. Nathaniel Thayer I (July 11, 1769 – June 23, 1840) was a congregational Unitarian minister.
Early life
Nathaniel Thayer was born in Hampton, New Hampshire to Ebenezer Thayer and Martha Olivia Cotton. His father was a pastor in Hampton ...
, a
Unitarian congregational
Congregational churches (also Congregationalist churches or Congregationalism) are Protestant churches in the Calvinist tradition practising congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its ...
minister from
Lancaster, Massachusetts
Lancaster is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, in the United States. Incorporated in 1653, Lancaster is the oldest town in Worcester County. As of the 2020 census, the town population was 8,441.
History
In 1643 Lancaster was first ...
.
Through his father, he was descended from
John Cotton, the preeminent minister and theologian of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony.
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
Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and th ...
in the mid-1890s, building up a collection which he housed in a museum in the main street of Lancaster.
[
He used his wealth to sponsor various natural history expeditions and in 1906 he sent Wilmot W. Brown to ]Guadalupe Island
Guadalupe Island ( es, Isla Guadalupe, link=no) is a volcanic island located off the western coast of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula and about southwest of the city of Ensenada in the state of Baja California, in the Pacific Ocean. The ...
off Pacific
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
. Here, Brown, H. W. Marsden and Ignacio Oroso gathered field data on how the natural vegetation was being destroyed by thousands of goat
The goat or domestic goat (''Capra hircus'') is a domesticated species of goat-antelope typically kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat (''C. aegagrus'') of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the a ...
s, to the detriment of the native wildlife. The native Guadalupe storm petrel was being predated by introduced cat
The cat (''Felis catus'') is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from the wild members of ...
s, as was the Guadalupe flicker. Both birds became extinct shortly afterwards; several other taxa
In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; plural taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular nam ...
were found to be already gone in 1906.[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.] Thayer and Outram Bangs Outram Bangs (January 12, 1863 – September 22, 1932) was an American zoologist.
Biography
Bangs was born in Watertown, Massachusetts, as the second son of Edward and Annie Outram (Hodgkinson) Bangs. He studied at Harvard from 1880 to 1884, and b ...
wrote an article in '' The Condor'' to draw attention to the situation.[
In 1913, Thayer and other Harvard graduates sponsored an expedition to ]Alaska
Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S. ...
and Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive region, geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a ...
, 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.
Thayer became ill in 1928, and donated his collection of 28,000 skins and 15,000 eggs and nests to Harvard.[Mearns, Barbara & Richard (1992): ''Audubon to Xantus: The Lives of Those Commemorated in North American Bird Names''. Academic Press, London & San Diego. ] These included the first clutches ever collected of spoon-billed sandpiper and surfbird
The surfbird (''Calidris virgata'') is a small stocky wader in the family Scolopacidae. It was once considered to be allied to the turnstones, and placed in the monotypic genus ''Aphriza'', but is now placed in the genus '' Calidris''.
This bir ...
. After Thayer's death Harvard received his collection of 3,500 mounted birds.
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
Clinton is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 15,428 at the 2020 census.
For geographic and demographic information on the census-designated place Clinton, please see the article Clinton (CDP), Massach ...
. After the marriage, they settled at the family farm at Lancaster. Together, John and Evelyn were the parents of:
* John Eliot Thayer Jr. (1887–1966), a delegate to 1928 Republican National Convention
The 1928 Republican National Convention was held at Convention Hall in Kansas City, Missouri, from June 12 to June 15, 1928.
Because President Coolidge had announced unexpectedly he would not run for re-election in 1928, Commerce Secretary H ...
from Massachusetts who married Katherine Lee Bayard Warren, a daughter of Samuel Dennis Warren.
* Evelyn Thayer (1888–1980), who married Isaac Tucker Burr (1885–1972)
* Nora Forbes Thayer (1889–1988), who married Francis Abbot Goodhue Jr.
* Natalie Thayer (1894–1975), who married Lawrence Hemenway (1891–1966).
* Duncan Forbes Thayer (1900–1957), who married Priscilla Pinkney McHenry (1906–1975). After his death, she married Charles Winslow Farnsworth in 1963.
Thayer died on July 29, 1933 in Lancaster and was buried at Old Settlers Burial Yard there.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thayer, John Eliot
1862 births
1949 deaths
American ornithologists
American people of Dutch descent
John Thayer
John Thayer
Harvard University alumni
John Thayer
John Thayer