Nathaniel Thayer III
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Nathaniel Thayer | |
|---|---|
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| Born | June 16, 1851 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | March 21, 1911 (aged 59) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 3 |
| Parent(s) | Nathaniel Thayer Jr. Cornelia Patterson Van Rensselaer |
| Relatives | John Thayer (brother) Nathaniel Thayer (grandfather) Stephen Van Rensselaer (grandfather) Katherine Winthrop (granddaughter) |
Nathaniel Thayer (June 13, 1851 – March 21, 1911)[1] was an American banker and railroad executive.
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]