Nathaniel Thayer III

Nathaniel Thayer (June 13, 1851 – March 21, 1911) and Cornelia Paterson (née Van Rensselaer) Thayer (1823–1897). Among his siblings was Stephen Van Rensselaer Thayer; Cornelia Van Rensselaer Thayer, who married J. Hampden Robb in 1868; Harriet Van Rensselaer Thayer; Eugene Van Rensselaer Thayer; Bayard Thayer; and John Eliot Thayer, a noted ornithologist. His father, a banker in the Boston firm of John E. Thayer and Brother, was fellow of Harvard and one of its largest benefactors.

Through his mother, he was a descendant of the Van Rensselaer and Schuyler families. His maternal grandparents were Stephen Van Rensselaer IV and Harriet Elizabeth (née Bayard Van Rensselaer). Through is father, he was descended from John Cotton, the preeminent minister and theologian of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

In 1876, Thayer became the president of the Boston, Clinton and Fitchburg Railroad Company and the Union Stock Yards Company of Chicago. He served as vice president of the North Chicago Rolling Mill Company

Cornelia Van Rensselaer Thayer (1881–1960), who married Danish Count Carl Moltke (1869–1935), in 1907. Anna Morton Thayer (1883–1953), who married William Samuel Patten (1873–1927) in June 1904. After his death, she married Rev. Thomas Frederick Davies (1872–1936) in 1930. Sarah Barroll Thayer (1885–1938), who was known as "the prettiest girl in Boston,"

After his first wife's death in 1885, he remarried to Pauline Revere (1862–1934), the daughter of Paul Joseph Revere (a Brig. Gen. who died during the Battle of Gettysburg and was the grandson and namesake of Revolutionary War patriot Paul Revere), on June 11, 1887. Pauline was a member of the Republican National Committee in 1924, "and was looked upon as advisor and confidante of both Presidents Coolidge and Hoover." In Boston, Thayer was a member of the Somerset Club, the Country Club, the Tennis and Racquet Club, the New Riding Club, the Eastern Yacht Club, the Algonquin Club, the Exchange Club, the St. Botolph Club, and in New York City, he was a member of the Knickerbocker Club, the Union Club of the City of New York, the Midday Club, the Turf and Field Club and the New York Yacht Club.

Thayer died at his home, 22 Fairfield Street in Boston (in the Back Bay neighborhood), on March 21, 1911, after suffering from a "general nervous breakdown." His widow died in 1934.

Descendants Through his eldest daughter, he was the maternal grandfather of Count Carl Adam Moltke (1908–1989), a member of the Danish underground in World War II, who married Mabel Wilson Wright (née Comstock) in 1944 (1909–1988). They divorced in 1956 and later that same year, he married Doris Eccles (1914-1965), the daughter of Edward Eccles (1882–1975) of Newport, Rhode Island.

Through his youngest daughter, he was the maternal grandfather of three, Nathaniel Thayer Winthrop; John Winthrop, who died young; and Katherine Winthrop (1914–1997), the tennis star,