Nathaniel Thayer III

Nathaniel Thayer (June 13, 1851 – March 21, 1911)[1] was an American banker and railroad executive.

Nathaniel Thayer
Born(1851-06-16)June 16, 1851
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
DiedMarch 21, 1911(1911-03-21) (aged 59)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma materHarvard University
Spouse(s)
Cornelia Street Barroll
​
(
m. 1881; died 1885)

Pauline Revere
​
(
m. 1887; his death 1911)
Children3
Parent(s)Nathaniel Thayer Jr.
Cornelia Patterson Van Rensselaer
RelativesJohn Thayer (brother)
Nathaniel Thayer (grandfather)
Stephen Van Rensselaer (grandfather)
Katherine Winthrop (granddaughter)

Early life

Thayer was born on June 13, 1851 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the son of Nathaniel Thayer Jr. (1808–1883)[2] and Cornelia Paterson (née Van Rensselaer) Thayer (1823–1897).[3] Among his siblings was Stephen Van Rensselaer Thayer; Cornelia Van Rensselaer Thayer, who married J. Hampden Robb in 1868;[4] Harriet Van Rensselaer Thayer; Eugene Van Rensselaer Thayer; Bayard Thayer; and John Eliot Thayer, a noted ornithologist.[5] His father, a banker in the Boston firm of John E. Thayer and Brother,[6] was fellow of Harvard and one of its largest benefactors.[7][8]

Through his mother, he was a descendant of the Van Rensselaer and Schuyler families. His maternal grandparents were Stephen Van Rensselaer IV and Harriet Elizabeth (née Bayard Van Rensselaer). Through is father, he was descended from John Cotton, the preeminent minister and theologian of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.[2] His paternal grandparents were the Rev. Dr. Nathaniel Thayer, a Unitarian congregational minister of Lancaster, Massachusetts, and his wife, Sarah Parker (née Toppan) Thayer.[8]

Thayer graduated from Harvard University in 1871, where five years earlier his father had given Thayer Hall to.

Career

After graduating from Harvard, he traveled abroad for two years. Upon his return in 1874, he went into the banking business with his father from whom he inherited $2,000,000,[1] who left an estate valued in excess of $16,000,000 to $17,000,000 upon his death in 1883.[9][10]

In 1876, Thayer became the president of the Boston, Clinton and Fitchburg Railroad Company and the Union Stock Yards Company of Chicago. He served as vice president of the North Chicago Rolling Mill Company[1] He was also a member of the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1877, and again in 1879, he was a Democratic candidate for the Massachusetts state legislature.[1]

He also served as a director of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, the American Bell Telephone Company, the American Telephone and Telegraph company, Massachusetts Life Insurance Company, Old Colony Trust Company, United States Steel, Merchants' National Bank, New England Trust Company. He was a trustee of the Massachusetts General Hospital Corporation.[1]

Personal life

On February 1, 1881, Thayer was married to Cornelia Street Barroll (1856–1885), the daughter of Benjamin Crockett Barroll, a well known lawyer and author of the law book, Barroll's Chancery Practice. In 1910, the Thayers lived in Lancaster, Massachusetts and had a home in Newport, Rhode Island.[11] Together, Nathaniel and Cornelia were the parents of:[1][11]

  • Cornelia Van Rensselaer Thayer (1881–1960),[12] who married Danish Count Carl Moltke (1869–1935),[13] the Danish Ambassador to the United States,[13] in 1907.[14]
  • Anna Morton Thayer (1883–1953), who married William Samuel Patten (1873–1927) in June 1904.[15] After his death, she married Rev. Thomas Frederick Davies (1872–1936) in 1930.[16][17]
  • Sarah Barroll Thayer (1885–1938),[18] who was known as "the prettiest girl in Boston,"[18] was married Frederic Bayard Winthrop (1868–1932), the son of banker Robert Winthrop in 1911.[19]

After his first wife's death in 1885, he remarried to Pauline Revere (1862–1934), the daughter of Paul Joseph Revere (a Brig. Gen. who died during the Battle of Gettysburg and was the grandson and namesake of Revolutionary War patriot Paul Revere), on June 11, 1887. Pauline was a member of the Republican National Committee in 1924, "and was looked upon as advisor and confidante of both Presidents Coolidge and Hoover." In Boston, Thayer was a member of the Somerset Club, the Country Club, the Tennis and Racquet Club, the New Riding Club, the Eastern Yacht Club, the Algonquin Club, the Exchange Club, the St. Botolph Club, and in New York City, he was a member of the Knickerbocker Club, the Union Club of the City of New York, the Midday Club, the Turf and Field Club and the New York Yacht Club.[1]

In 1897 Nathaniel Thayer III inherited a mansion from his mother Cornelia Van Rensselaer Thayer. In 1902, with his expanding fortune, he decided to increase the size of the home on Main street in Lancaster, MA to a 42 room home. He hired architect Ogden Codman Jr. to design, enlarge and remodel the mansion. Codman had made quite a name for himself in Newport and New York as a “top-notch interior designer”. He added two new wings to The Homestead which “has virtually been unchanged since 1902” [20]

Thayer died at his home, 22 Fairfield Street in Boston (in the Back Bay neighborhood), on March 21, 1911,[1] after suffering from a "general nervous breakdown."[21] His widow died in 1934.

Descendants

Through his eldest daughter, he was the maternal grandfather of Count Carl Adam Moltke (1908–1989), a member of the Danish underground in World War II,[22] who married Mabel Wilson Wright (née Comstock) in 1944 (1909–1988).[23][24] They divorced in 1956 and later that same year, he married Doris Eccles (1914-1965), the daughter of Edward Eccles (1882–1975)[25] of Newport, Rhode Island.[26]

Through his youngest daughter, he was the maternal grandfather of three, Nathaniel Thayer Winthrop; John Winthrop, who died young; and Katherine Winthrop (1914–1997),[27] the tennis star,[18] who married Quincy Adams Shawn McKean (1891–1971), the parents of David McKean, the U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg during Barack Obama's presidency.[28][29]

gollark: This is ridiculous, we should agree on things.
gollark: Why?
gollark: I showed you it, using my eyes.
gollark: Yes.
gollark: Done.

References
  1. "NATHANIEL THAYER DEAD. Capitalist and Railroad Promoter Dies at His Home in Boston" (PDF). The New York Times. March 22, 1911. Retrieved 23 July 2018.
  2. "NATHANIEL THAYER" (PDF). The New York Times. March 8, 1883. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
  3. "THAYER" (PDF). The New York Times. March 6, 1897. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
  4. "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.
  5. Spooner, Walter Whipple (1 January 1900). "Van Rensselaer family". American Historical Magazine. [S.l. : s.n. (Vol. 2 Issue 1). Retrieved 8 November 2016.
  6. "Nathaniel Thayer. Papers, 1798-1844". Andover-Harvard Theological Library. Harvard Divinity School. 2005-11-22. Retrieved 2007-03-16.
  7. Wilson & Fiske 1889, p. 73.
  8. Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1889). "Thayer, Nathaniel" . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton.
  9. "GENERAL NOTES. The estate of the late Nathaniel Thayer, of Boston, is estimated at $17,000,000" (PDF). The New York Times. March 30, 1883. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
  10. "THE LATE NATHANIEL THAYER'S ESTATE" (PDF). The New York Times. April 30, 1883. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
  11. 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. 27. Retrieved 23 July 2018.
  12. "COUNTESS MOLTKE DIES; Widow of Former Danish Foreign Minister Was 79". The New York Times. 16 June 1960. Retrieved 16 January 2018.
  13. "COUNT CARL MOLTKE OF DENMARK IS DEAD; Former Minister to the United States Served in the First Socialist Cabinet". The New York Times. 6 September 1935. Retrieved 16 January 2018.
  14. "Miss Thayer is Countess. Weds Danish Noble at Lancaster. Ceremony at Country Home by Bishop Lawrence. Moltke, Diplomat, is the Bridegroom". New York Times. 30 June 1907. Retrieved 26 March 2011. This noon, at ... beautiful country seat of Mr and ... National Thayer, their daughter, ... Cornelia Van Rennsealaer Thayer ... Count Carl Moltke of Copenhagen, ... were married...
  15. "294 Beacon". www.backbayhouses.org. Back Bay Houses. 7 July 2013. Retrieved 23 July 2018.
  16. Patten, Bill (2008). My Three Fathers: And the Elegant Deceptions of My Mother, Susan Mary Alsop. PublicAffairs. p. 60. ISBN 9780786721719. Retrieved 23 July 2018.
  17. Who's Who in the Clergy. J.C. Schwarz. 1935. p. 281. Retrieved 23 July 2018.
  18. "MRS. WINTHROP CRASH VICTIM Truck Driver Is Held in Boston Woman's Death". The Boston Globe. 6 August 1938. p. 1. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
  19. Linzee, John William (1917). The Lindeseie and Limesi Families of Great Britain: Including the Probates at Somerset House, London, England, of All the Spellings of the Name Lindeseie from 1300 to 1800. Priv. Print. [The Fort Hill Press]. p. 794. Retrieved 23 July 2018.
  20. Lennon, Heather Maurer (2005). Lancaster Revisited. Charleston, SC: Arcadia.
  21. "Nathaniel Thayer Better" (PDF). The New York Times. March 14, 1911. Retrieved 23 July 2018.
  22. "The Power of Conscience-Director's Statement". www.powerofconscience.com. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  23. "Mab Moltke Dies at 78; Ex-Publicity Executive". The New York Times. 28 January 1988. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  24. "Mrs. Mabel Wright Is Engaged To Count. Fiancee of Carl A. Moltke, Son of Late Danish Envoy to U.S." New York Times. 17 May 1944. Retrieved 24 December 2012. Mrs. Arthur Comstock of 540 Park Avenue has announced the engagement of her daughter, Mrs. Mabel Wilson Wright, to Count Carl A. Moltke, son of Countess...
  25. "Edward Eccles". Newport Mercury. January 31, 1975. p. 2. Retrieved 23 March 2017.
  26. "COUNTESS MOLTKE". The New York Times. 15 June 1965. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  27. "Katharine McKean, Tennis Player, 82". The New York Times. February 22, 1997. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
  28. "Miss Kaye Is Wed To David McKean". The New York Times. October 16, 1988. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
  29. "McKean, David". state.gov. U.S. Department of State. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
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