Background
He was was born in Lancaster, Massachussets, seventh of the eight children of the Rev. Nathaniel and Sarah (Toppan) Thayer. His father, minister of the only church then existing in Lancaster, was of a branch of the Thayer family that traced its New England ancestry to Richard Thayer, an early settler of Braintree, Massachussets. In the intervening generations the family developed a tendency towards the ministry, several of Dr. Thayer's relatives having been like him Congregational clergymen and graduates of Harvard, while a collateral branch produced Father John Thayer, who was converted in France in 1783, and had the distinction of being the first priest of a regularly organized Roman Catholic church in Boston.