Representative Edward Hankinson Thayer View All Years

EDWARD H. THAYER was born at Windham, Maine, November 27, 1832; he died at Clinton, Iowa, November 7, 1904. He attended school at Orono, Maine, and graduated from the East Corinth Academy in 1850. When he reached the age of eighteen he came to Cleveland, Ohio, where he read law and was admitted to the bar. While in Cleveland he also attended medical lectures and did local work on some of the newspapers of that day. He was one of the first shorthand writers in that section of the country. He reported speeches by Stephen A. Douglas, Lewis Cass, Horace Greeley, Sam Houston, Louis Kossuth, Gen. Scott, and other distinguished gentlemen. It is said that he reported Gen. Scott’s speeches in which he spoke of “the rich Irish brogue” and “the sweet German accent.” Removing to Iowa in 1853 he first settled in Muscatine, where he practiced his profession three years. In 1855 he was elected prosecuting attorney, and two years later county judge. This was under the old law, when the county judges were supreme executive authorities in their counties. Two years later he was reelected. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention of 1860, where he supported Stephen A. Douglas for the presidency. He established The Muscatine Courier in 1861, and in 1868 founded The Clinton Age, with which he was connected to the end of his days. From the establishment of The Age he became one of the commanding influences in the city and county of Clinton and throughout eastern Iowa. For many years he was an influential promoter of railroad interests in that portion of the State. He served as a representative in the General Assembly of 1876, and in that year was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, where he supported Samuel J. Tilden for the presidential nomination. In the convention of 1884, to which he was a delegate at large, he was a warm advocate of the nomination of Grover Cleveland. He presided over the Good Roads Convention in Chicago in 1892. In that great movement he was a leading actor for many years. He was long a working and deeply interested member of the school board of Clinton. Governor Kirkwood appointed him a trustee of the State Normal School. He was one of the trusted men of his party throughout his more than fifty years in Iowa, one who always enjoyed the fullest confidence of the opposition.