Santa Clara County
Biographies
DR. JAMES WILLIAM THAYER
DR. JAMES WILLIAM THAYER. There are few men prominent in
professional circles of Santa Clara county who have achieved better or more
comprehensive results during a quarter of a century of practice than has
Dr. James William Thayer, a resident of Gilroy since May, 1889,
and equally successful as a physician and surgeon, politician, fraternalist, and an enterprising and broad-gauged citizen.
The primary foundation of that steadfastness and
sincerity of character which has distinguished the career of Dr. Thayer
was laid by English ancestors who sought larger freedom in the American
colonies as early as 1639, presumably locating in the city of Boston. Later
bearers of the name dispersed to different parts of the east according to their
tastes and inclinations, a not distant forebear locating in Wyoming county, N. Y., where
Dr. James William Thayer was born in the vicinity of La Grange
July 23, 1854. The same house seems to have been the prized
possession of the maternal family of Lockwood, and in it Eliza, the mother of
the doctor, was welcomed as an infant in 1820. Not far distant, in the same
county, William John Thayer, the father of James William, was
born in 1820, and the parents therefore were reared in the same community, and
conned their books in the same log school house. Their marriage occurred while
both were comparatively young. The wife died in 1885, at the age of sixty-five,
but the husband is still a resident of the community which trusted him as a
child, encouraged him as a man, and venerates him as one whose temperate and
well-balanced life has enabled him to attain to four score and four years. Of the six children born into the family, Dr. James William
and his sisters Mary and Helen H. alone survive. Those deceased are
Rollin C., Herman and Charles F.
Preparatory to his life of great usefulness, Dr. Thayer
attended the public schools of Wyoming county, the
Wyoming Academy, and the Union Collegiate Institute, graduating from the
classical and scientific courses June 19, 1874. While at the
institute he took extra studies in Greek and the rudiments of medicine, but the
strain told upon his nervous energy, and he was obliged to return to his father’s
farm to recuperate in outdoor work. June 26 of the same year he was united
in marriage with Mary S. Dexter, who was born in 1855, and died in
July, 1876. She was the mother of a daughter, Delia Florine Thayer.
In the meantime the doctor studied medicine in connection with his farm work,
his preceptor for a couple of years being Dr. W. B. Sprague, of
Pavilion, N. Y. The year following the death of his wife, in 1877, he went
to Ashland, Neb., and there pursued his studies under Dr. Gray, a year
later entering the Medical College of Keokuk, Iowa, from which he was duly
graduated in February, 1879. For the following two years he practiced medicine
in Ogdensburg, Riley county, Kans., and while there married
Effie A. Parrish, of which union there is a daughter, Laura E.
From Ogdensburg the doctor moved to Milford, Kans., where he combined medical
practice with a drug business, and in 1883 was appointed resident physician of the main hospital of the Mexican Central
Railroad, at Chihuahua, Mexico. His experience in the south was both broadening
and interesting, permitting of advancement along special surgical lines, and of
mastery of the Spanish language. From December, 1887, until the spring of 1889
the doctor practiced in El Paso, Tex., thus making almost six years in the
south, the summers of which were exceedingly enervating. For the purpose of
regaining his health he came to California in the spring of 1889, and as
heretofore stated located in Gilroy in May of the same year. Continuously ever
since he has been engaged in general practice, and in the meantime has had many
honors showered upon him, and has met with continued appreciation of his
learning and skill. He was appointed railroad physician at this point in 1890
and has held the position since that time. No less than twenty-three old line
insurance companies employ him as examining physician, and he is a member of
the Santa Clara County Medical Society, the State Medical Society, the American
Medical Association, the Pacific Society of Railroad Surgeons and the
International Association of Railway Surgeons.
Notwithstanding his exceptionally busy professional life
Dr. Thayer has found time to promote the municipal welfare as a broad-minded
and clear-cut Republican, allegiance to which party has won him offices of
local responsibility. For ten years, from 1892 until 1902, he was a member of
the town council, and from 1894 until the present writing was health officer of
the town. The doctor is particularly active in the Independent Order of
Foresters, having passed through all of the chairs of Gilroy Court
No. 819, and been a member of the High Council of State. He enjoys the
rank of Past High Physician and represented the state at the meeting of the
Supreme Court at Toronto, Canada, in 1898, receiving the highest number of votes
out of seven delegates. He is also a member of the Gilroy Grove No. 130,
U. A. O. D., and conductor in the local lodge, and a member of
the Fraternal Brotherhood. With his daughters he attends the Presbyterian
Church at Gilroy. Dr. Thayer enjoys that distinction which arises from
great goodness of heart exercised along helpful and reconstructing lines, and
from that breadth of mind and tolerance which retains belief in the grace of
human nature.
Transcribed by Marie Hassard 08 May 2015.
Source: History
of the State of California & Biographical Record of Coast Counties,
California by Prof. J. M. Guinn, A. M., Pages
593-594. The Chapman Publishing Co.,
Chicago, 1904.
© 2015 Marie
Hassard.