previous next

Thayer, Sylvanus 1785-1872

Military officer; born in Braintree, Mass., June 9, 1785; graduated at Dartmouth College in 1807 and at West Point in 1808, entering the corps of engineers. He was chief engineer of Dearborn's army in 1812, and of Hampton's division in 1813. He was chief engineer in the defence of Norfolk, Va., in 1814. In 1815 he was sent with Colonel McRae to Belgium and France to examine the fortifications there; and from 1817 to 1833 he was superintendent at West Point, and established the academy on its present basis. In 1838 he was made lieutenantcolonel, and from 1833 to 1857 was constructing engineer of the defences of Boston Harbor, and temporary chief of the engineer corps from 1857 to 1859. He was commissioned colonel in March, 1863; brevetted brigadier-general in May; and resigned June 1. He died in South Braintree, Mass., Sept. 7, 1872.

Harper and Brothers Publishers. . New York. 1902.

Tufts University provided support for entering this text.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Sylvanus Thayer (1)
John I. McRae (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
1857 AD (2)
1833 AD (2)
September 7th, 1872 AD (1)
1872 AD (1)
March, 1863 AD (1)
1859 AD (1)
1838 AD (1)
1817 AD (1)
1815 AD (1)
1814 AD (1)
1813 AD (1)
1812 AD (1)
1808 AD (1)
1807 AD (1)
June 9th, 1785 AD (1)
1785 AD (1)
June 1st (1)
May (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: