Early Life, Education and Degrees
Thacher was the son of Elizabeth Baldwin (Sherman) Thacher, granddaughter of Roger Sherman, and Thomas Anthony Thacher. The family had a history at Yale University. His mother's father, Roger Sherman, Jr., had obtained his bachelor's degree from Yale in 1787 and his father obtained his 1835. His father was also both an administrator and a professor of Latin at Yale. He had a sister, Elizabeth, who would one day marry U.S. Congressman William Kent and a brother, William L. Thacher, who would join him in the Thacher School.
Thacher attended Hopkins Grammar School in his youth before himself attending Yale. An editor of the Yale Record, he distinguished himself in English, taking second prize in English composition during his second year. From 1883 to 1884, he worked as a salesman for W. & J. Sloane in New York City, before, in 1886, he earned a Bachelor of Laws with honors from Yale, taking the Townsend Prize and the John Addison Porter Prize. In 1923, Yale would bestow upon him an honorary Master of Arts.
During his college career, he was a member of Delta Kappa, Psi Upsilon, and Skull and Bones. In 1926, Occidental College of Los Angeles made him an honorary charter member of the Delta chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.
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