Hon. Eli Thayer was born in the town of Mendon, in the state of Massachusetts, June 11, 1819, and deceased at Worcester, in that state, April 15, 1899, aged eighty years. He was elected a member of the American Irish Historical Society in 1897, shortly after its first meeting, and was an active and interested member at the time of his death. Mr. Thayer was a descendant in the seventh generation from Thomas Thayer and seventh in descent from John Alden of _Mayflower_ fame, through Ruth, daughter of Rev. Noah Alden of Bellingham, Mass., who married his grandfather, Benjamin Thayer. John Alden was an Irishman and Thomas Thayer was Irish on the side of one of his parents. He was the eldest of eight children. He received his early education in the district schools of Mendon, and at the Bellingham High School. Later he attended the academy at Amherst and the manual training school at Worcester, afterwards the Worcester Academy. He always ranked high in his scholarship, and in 1835–’36 taught school in Douglass, and for the four succeeding years assisted his father in a country store at Millville. In May, 1840, he re-entered the manual labor school, in order to fit for Brown University. Two years later he taught school at Hopkinton, Rhode Island, and while there was elected a member of the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity, an honor seldom conferred before the senior year. In September, 1844, the superintendent of schools in Providence, Nathan Bishop, induced him to take charge of the boys’ high school for the remainder of the year for $600, a large salary for that period. This school had proven for some time unmanageable in the hands of several masters, but he reduced it to order and subjection. By accepting this position, he lost a year at Brown University, but was able to graduate in 1845, the second in his class. After his graduation, he immediately came to Worcester and became a teacher at the Academy, and was later its principal. In 1845 he purchased of John Jaques four acres and ninety rods of land in Worcester, on what was then called Goat Hill. In 1848 he began the erection of the building called the Oread, which was completed in 1852. It is built of the stone underlying the hill. At first only the north tower was completed, and it was in this portion of the building that he established the famous school for young women, which he conducted with great success until he entered upon his later political work. At the time that the school was opened, it was the only institute in the country that promised a full college course for women. It was the forerunner of Vassar, Smith and Wellesley. The name Oread means “the abode of the mountain nymphs.” The south tower was completed in 1850, and the connecting portion of the building a year or two later.