John Eliot Thayer. 1862-1933

LANCASTER, in Massachusetts, has been identified with the Thayer family for nearly a century and a half. It stands there today, an aristocrat among towns, solidly planted near the west bank of the Nashua River some thirty-five miles from Boston. Its comfortable homes, well-kept lawns and shrubbery, above all its splendid shade trees, bear mute testimony to the loving care of a generation of Thayers now unhappily gone. And among these none will be longer remembered than John Eliot Thayer. In a part of the world where rural centers long ago lost their cultured leaders and much of the old social tradition, John Thayer stands out as the finest example of what a New England country gentleman ought to be. Indeed I can think of no other alive today who is filling quite the same niche that he did. People of means now identify themselves almost wholly with city life and city interests, migrating to the country for short summer seasons, but John fixed upon Lancaster and his bird collections as almost his sole interests. In Lancaster he could be