Educator; born in
Mendon, Mass., June 11, 1819; graduated at Brown College in 1845; established the Oread Institute,
Worcester, Mass., in 1848; member of the legislature in 1853-54, during which period he organized and founded the Emigrant Aid Company and endeavored to unite the
North in favor of his scheme to send into
Kansas anti-slavery settlers.
His company founded
Topeka,
Lawrence,
Manhattan, and Ossawatomie, of which places
Gov. Charles Robinson said: “Without these settlements
Kansas would have been a slave State without a struggle; without the Aid Society these towns would never have existed; and that society was born of the brain of
Eli Thayer.”
Mr. Thayer was a member of Congress in 1857-61.
He invented an automatic boiler cleaner, an hydraulic elevator, and a sectional safety steamboiler.
His publications include a history of the Emigrant Aid Company; several lectures; a volume of his speeches in Congress; and the
Kansas crusade.
He died in
Worcester, Mass., April 15, 1899.