General William Larned
Thacher
Male
United States of America
1866-10-09
New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America
1953-11-02
Los Angeles, California, United States of America


About

From: A Quarter-century record of the class of eighteen-eighty-seven, Yale College, by Yale University. Class of 1887. (Publication date: 1915)

William Larned Thacher

Associate Headmaster of the Thacher School, Ojai Valley, Nordhoff, California

William L. Thacher is a son of Professor Thomas Anthony Thacher, B.A. Yale 1835 and M.A. 1838, LL.D., Western Reserve 1869, and Elizabeth Baldwin (Sherman) Thacher, who were married August 1, 1860, and had three other children: Sherman Day, Yale 1883 (now associate headmaster of the Thacher School for boys at Nordhoff), Elizabeth (married William Kent, 1887) and George Thacher, who died at the age of nineteen. […]

William Larned Thacher was born in New Haven, October 9, 1866. His boyhood was spent in the place of his birth, and he was prepared at the Hopkins Grammar School. In college he received dissertation appointments in Junior and Senior years, was on the Yale Intercollegiate Tennis Team and president of the Tennis Club, on the Junior Prom Committee, an editor of the Yale News, and a member of Psi Upsilon and Skull and Bones.

He spent the first year after graduation in the Yale Medical School and the three years following in the Union Theological Seminary of New York City. From 1888 to 1894 he was connected with the Students’ Branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association of New York City and also with the University Settlement and Union Settlement of that city.

In 1894-95 he was a home missionary in a Presbyterian church in East Bradford, Pennsylvania. Since 1895, he has been associated with his brother, Sherman Day Thacher, in the Thacher School for Boys, first as a teacher, then as assistant headmaster, and now as associate headmaster and head of the Latin department. He writes:

“My travels have included about twenty-five crossings of the continent for pleasure, health, school business and class meetings. Then, my mother and I have been to Europe three times, to Hawaii and Alaska twice, and even over the line into Mexico.

“My recreations have been games like tennis (the boys seldom beat me yet!), golf, baseball (we play daily with the boys at recess; I am first base), horseback riding, camping, fishing, auction bridge, backgammon with Madame Thacher, etc.

“I have always taken an interest in the Ojai Valley Presbyterian Church and am glad of a union of it and a Congregational church, which I helped along. They were each struggling missionary churches at different ends of the village street. They were put on wheels and rolled to a central point and became one self-supporting organization.

“Education and charitable works have interested me, like the local schools, several Los Angeles settlements, Children’s Home Society, a missionary Thacher School in India, etc. My aims, I suppose, are covered by a motto of my father: ‘Xe sua quis – que sed aliena quoque inspiciat’ (‘I teach Latin and so may be allowed this liberty!’).”

Thacher is also vice-president and a director of the Ojai Improvement Company, which owns a hotel, some land and the waterworks of the village, trustee of the Ojai Public Library, president of the Ojai cemetery, president of the Ojai Valley Tennis Club, trustee and chairman of the finance committee of the Ojai Presbyterian Church, and he has been a representative of the Yale Alumni Association of Southern California upon the Advisory Board since its formation.

He is a Progressive Republican in politics and is a member of the Sierra, Ojai Valley, Ojai Valley Tennis and Golf clubs, the University Club of Los Angeles and the Archaeological Society of America.

Thacher was married in Sierra Madre, California, June 27, 1911, to Hilda, daughter of John George Blumer, a retired English shipbuilder and present owner of an orange and lemon ranch near Los Angeles, and sister of Dr George Blumer, dean of the Yale Medical School.



Media


Archive statistics 1885 - 1903
0
33
21


Tournaments Ojai Championships - 1903 Ojai Championships - 1902 Ojai Championships - 1900 New England Championships - 1888 New York Lawn Tennis Club Amateur Tournament - 1888 US Open - 1887 New England Championships - 1887 Intercollegiate Championships - 1887 Orange Spring Tournament - 1887 New England Championships - 1886 Intercollegiate Championships - 1886 Intercollegiate Championships - 1885

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