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Subject: [THAYER] L. Lockwood THAYER - Biography
Date: 23 Nov 2001 17:13:16 -0700

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Surnames: Thayer, Hayward, Wilcox, Harris, Thomas, Lockwood, Marcy, Ditmars, Grover, Davis, Marvin, Hurlburt
Classification: Biography

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SOURCE: Biographical Review of the Leading Citizens of Livingston and Wyoming Counties New York
Boston, Biographical Review Publishing Company, 1895

L. LOCKWOOD THAYER, attorney at-law in Warsaw, Wyoming County, N.Y., was born in this village on April 28, 1842. He is a descendant of Ferdinando THAYER, who emigrated from England to America about 1630 or 1635, and settled, with other English colonists, in Braintree, Mass. On January 14, 1652, he was married to Huldah HAYWARD, of Braintree. He moved after his father’s death to a new plantation called Mendon, and being possessed of considerable wealth for that period, he was able to give each of his sons a farm. Several of them became extensive land owners. Ferdinando THAYER lived to be nearly ninety years old and died in 1713.

Mr. L. Lockwood THAYER’s great-grandfather, Gideon THAYER, a great-grandson of Captain Thomas, son of Ferdinando and Huldah THAYER was born in 1753 in Smithfield, R.I., ,in which place he married Miss Meribah WILCOX, January 10, 1776. He was a soldier during the Revolutionary War, and was one of the first who received a pension. His hatred to the Tories was very bitter; and it is related of him that, when eighty years old, he administered a caning to one of the obnoxious party. After peace was declared, he settled in Oswego, ,N.Y. and from there came to Lima, where he died aged eighty-four years.

Willard THAYER, son of Gideon, was born in 1784, and came to Wyoming County, New York, in 1807. He was married twice, his first wife being Miss Phoebe HARRIS who was the mother of four children – Isaac; Linus W.; Mary; and Israel, who was accidentally drowned in the Mississippi River in early youth. The second Mrs. THAYER was before marriage, Rebecca THOMAS. Of the seven children she bore her husband, only one, William F., is now living. Mrs. Rebecca THAYER died March 12, 1817, aged twenty-eight. Her husband lived to the age of seventy-nine, dying on March 23, 1862. He was an arbiter and counselor among the farmers of the neighborhood, who had great faith in his judgment and impartiality.

His son, General Linus W. THAYER, was born in Gainesville, Wyoming County, May 23, 1811, and married October 28, 1840, Miss Caroline Matilda LOCKWOOD, whose birth date was the twelfth day of January, 1823. There were seven children born of this marriage, all of whom were daughters except Linus Lockwood, the subject of this sketch. And he and his sister Florence, who lives with him, are the only survivors. General Linus W. THAYER was admitted to practice law in 1839, and moved to Warsaw in 1841, winning and holding a position among the lawyers of his county and of Western New York, working in his chosen profession, the peer of his ablest associates for fifty-three years, the last week of his life preparing for an argument in the Court of Appeals and dying in the harness, August 6, 1892, at the age of eighty-one years. He had an unfailing fund of humor. He was direct and earnest, sometimes blunt in expression, but kind at heart. His success in his profession is explained !
by his love for it, and in the last analysis it appears to have been largely due to his rare common sense. No one of his ancestors, in a direct line for five generations, died under the age of seventy-six years. His father died at seventy-eight, his grandfather at eighty-four, a more remote ancestor at ninety. He was commissioned in 1838 by Governor MARCY as Major in the Twenty-sixth Regiment of New York Cavalry and in 1839 commissioned as Colonel by Governor Seward, who in 1841 commissioned him as Brigadier general. When the physician at his bedside, near the end, inquired, “How do you feel, General?” he replied, “I feel like an honest man.”

After all that may be said of his attainments, of his ability, of his courage, of his power, of his success, it also deserves to be said of Linus Warner THAYER that he was, and he might feel like, that “noblest work of God,” an honest man. His motives and his methods of political work were always manly and free from hypocrisy or indirection. What he did to assure the nomination of Grover Cleveland for the office of Governor of New York is well known. The newspapers and many sagacious observers at the time recognized the efficient work which he did in making that nomination possible. In a letter received from Mr. Cleveland to the chairman of the memorial meeting of the Wyoming County bar, he says, “His death cannot but be a very great loss to the community in which he lived, and cannot but be sincerely mourned by all those who are fortunate enough to claim his friendship.”

Mr. L. Lockwood THAYER, who, like his father, has followed the legal profession, graduated from the Warsaw Academy at twenty. He had been reading law previously in his father’s office, but, after leaving school, he put himself under the tuition of Mr. A. D. DITMARS, of New York, No. 61 Williams Street. This gentleman, who is still in practice there, must have been a competent instructor, for in 1866, Mr. THAYER was admitted to the bar after standing a rigid examination from Judges GROVER, DAVIS, and MARVIN. Mr. THAYER entered partnership with his father, which was dissolved only with the death of the latter.

On the 13th of October 1868, he was united in marriage to Miss Emma HURLBURT, a daughter of Julius C. and Dorothy (AMES) HURLBURT, both deceased. Mrs. THAYER has two own and to half-brothers living, one of whom, Mr. HERSCHEL HURLBURT, is foreman of the printing office of the Wyoming County Times. Three children were born to bless and sanctify this union: Blanche L., “a fair girl graduate,” one of the most popular and attractive young women in Warsaw, just returned with high honors from Wellesley College; L. Clinton, a student at Rochester Business College; and Maud, a winsome little maiden of thirteen. Mr. THAYER is a Democrat in politics. He was appointed Postmaster in 1888 under President Cleveland and filled the office under Harrison. He is a Master Mason, and also an Odd Fellow, belonging to Crystal Salt Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

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