|
Senate Years of Service: 1867-1871 Party: Republican
![](//webharvest.gov/congress115th/20180926161839im_/http://bioguide.congress.gov/bioguide/photo/T/T000148.jpg) |
Library of Congress
|
THAYER, John Milton, (uncle of Arthur Laban Bates),
a Senator from Nebraska; born in Bellingham, Mass., January 24, 1820; graduated
from Brown University, Providence, R.I., in 1841; studied law; admitted to the bar and practiced;
editor of a journal; moved to Nebraska in 1854, engaged in agricultural pursuits, and practiced law in
Omaha; brigadier general and major general of the Territorial forces operating against the Pawnee
Indians 1855-1861; member, Territorial State senate 1860; delegate to the State constitutional
convention in 1860; during the Civil War served in the Union Army as colonel and then brigadier
general of the First Regiment, Nebraska Volunteer Infantry; brevetted major general of Volunteers in
1865; member of the State constitutional convention in 1866; upon the admission of Nebraska as a
State into the Union was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate and served from March
1, 1867, to March 3, 1871; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1871; chairman, Committee on
Enrolled Bills (Forty-first Congress); appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant as Governor of the
Territory of Wyoming 1875-1879; Governor of Nebraska 1887-1891; resumed the practice of law
in Lincoln, Nebr., and died there March 19, 1906; interment in Wyuka Cemetery.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Curtis, Earl G. John Milton Thayer. Nebraska
History 29 (March/June 1948): 134-50.
|