Dr. Thacher received from Harvard the honorary degrees of Master of Arts and Doctor of Medicine in 1810, and from Dartmouth in the same year, and was made a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He married Susanna, daughter of Nathan Hayward of Bridgewater, and sister of Dr. Nathan Hayward of Plymouth, and had Betsey Hayward, 1785, who married Daniel Robert Elliott of Savannah, Georgia, and Michael Hodge of Newburyport; Susan, 1788, who died in infancy; James, 1790, who also died in infancy; James Hersey, 1792, who died in 1793; Susan, 1794, who married Wm. Bartlett, and Catherine, 1797, who died in 1800. Dr. Thacher died May 26, 1844, and his wife died May 17, 1842. CHAPTER XXIX. James Thacher Hodge, another distinguished son of Plymouth, was associated with North street, where he had his home for some years with his mother and his grandfather, Dr. James Thacher. His father, Michael Hodge of Newburyport, a graduate of Harvard in the class of 1799, married in 1814 Betsey Hayward, widow of Daniel Robert Elliott of Savannah, Georgia, and daughter of James and Susannah (Hayward) Thacher of Plymouth, and James Thacher Hodge, his only son, was born in Plymouth in 1816. Mr. Hodge graduated at Harvard in 1836, and at once applied himself to the study of chemistry, mineralogy and geology, a field of science in which he was destined to become distinguished. Among his early labors were those performed with Dr. Chas. T. Jackson, also a native of Plymouth, on the geological survey of Maine, and with Professor Henry D. Rogers on the geological survey of Pennsylvania. He was afterwards engaged in testing and utilizing the mineral wealth of Lake Superior lands, and the explorations and reports made by him largely aided in developing the mining interests of the northwest. In later times, as one after another, new state and territory extended our limits in the west, he was among the first to discover beneath their surface the rich tribute they were ready to pay as they entered the gates of the union. I believe that science will find no step treading its paths more vigorous than his, and no keener eye exploring its mysteries. After a season’s work on the southern shore of Lake Superior he left Marquette in the steamer Colburn on the 12th of October, 1871, and on her passage to Detroit the steamer foundered in a gale and he with others was lost. He inherited from his grandfather the firmness of nerve which had distinguished, him in his surgical practice, and from his father, a fearlessness amounting at times to rashness. Mr. Hodge in preparing his reports was a careful writer, preferring a criticism for undue caution to a final discovery of extravagant statements leading unwary investors to failure and misfortune. Within the field of his literary efforts must be included some hundreds of articles on scientific subjects contributed to the American Cyclopædia.