Thomas Thacher (1 May 1620 – 15 October 1678) was an English-American clergyman.

Biography

Thomas Thacher was born in

Milton Clevedon Milton Clevedon is a village and civil parish south of Evercreech in the county of Somerset, England. History The name of the village means the middle settlement, possibly because it is halfway between Evercreech and Bruton. An early Iron Ag ...

on 1 May 1620. He we was educated by his father, a minister at Salisbury, who prepared him for entrance to one of the English universities, but the son declined to subscribe to the religious tests that were then a condition of matriculation, and resolved on settling in New England. He reached Boston on 4 June 1635, and soon afterward entered the family of Reverend

Charles Chauncy Charles Chauncy (baptized 5 November 1592 – 19 February 1672) was an Anglo-American Congregational church, Congregational clergyman, educator, and secondarily, a physician. He was the second President of Harvard University, Harvard. Life ...

at Scituate, under whose guidance he studied mental philosophy and theology, and attained a remarkable knowledge of the Eastern languages. He was especially noted for the great beauty of his transcriptions of

Syriac Syriac may refer to: * Suret, a Neo-Aramaic language * Syriac alphabet, a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Syriac Christianity, a branch of Eastern Christianity * Syriac la ...

and other Eastern characters, and also acquired a knowledge of medicine, practicing occasionally with success. He married Elizabeth Partridge Kemp on 11 May 1643 and they had four children. She died on 2 June 1664, and he remarried to Margaret Webb Sheaffe. He was ordained at Weymouth on 2 January 1644, and shortly afterward took charge of the congregation of that village. Here he remained till 1664, when he removed to Boston, possibly because the relatives of his second wife resided there, although he is said to have been dismissed by his congregation in Weymouth a little before that time. He practiced as a physician in Boston for the next two years, but preached occasionally. On 16 February 1669, he was installed pastor of the

Old South Meeting House The Old South Meeting House is a historic Congregationalism in the United States, Congregational church building located at the corner of Milk Street, Boston, Milk and Washington Street (Boston), Washington Streets in the Downtown Crossing are ...

. He is mentioned in terms of high praise by

Cotton Mather Cotton Mather (; February 12, 1663 – February 13, 1728) was a Puritan clergyman and author in colonial New England, who wrote extensively on theological, historical, and scientific subjects. After being educated at Harvard College, he join ...

in the ''Magnalia'', who quotes an

elegy An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...

, written partly in

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

and partly in

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Eleazar Eleazar (; ) or Elazar was a priest in the Hebrew Bible, the second High Priest, succeeding his father Aaron after he died. He was a nephew of Moses. Biblical narrative Eleazar played a number of roles during the course of the Exodus, from ...

, a Native American student at

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate education, undergraduate college of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Part of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Scienc ...

, in which the virtues of Thacher are celebrated. He wrote ''A Brief Rule to Guide the Common People of New England how to order Themselves and Theirs in the Small Pocks or Measels'', which is supposed to have been the first work on medicine that was published in Massachusetts (Boston, 1677; 2d ed., 1702), and ''A Fast of God's Chusing; Fast Sermon'' (1674). Thomas Thacher died in Boston on 15 October 1678.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thacher, Thomas 1620 births 1678 deaths American Congregationalist ministers 17th-century American physicians American medical writers American religious writers People from Mendip District English emigrants to the United States