Thacher, Solon O., statesman, jurist and man of affairs, was born in Steuben county, N. Y., Aug. 31, 1830. His father was a county judge. He graduated from Union College of Schenectady, N. Y., and from the Albany Law School. In Sept., 1856, he married Sarah M. Gilmore of York, N. Y. He came to Kansas in 1858, located at Lawrence and was one of the proprietors of the Lawrence Journal. He was a member of the Wyandotte constitutional convention; was appointed judge of the Fourth judicial district in 1861; was a candidate for governor in opposition to the Lane faction of the Republican party in 1864; and from that time until 1880 was engaged in the practice of law. He amassed a fortune; was several times regent of the state university; held the chair of equity jurisprudence in its law school, and in 1880 was elected to the state senate. Two years later he was a candidate for governor against John P. St. John. At the close of his first term in the senate he was appointed a member of a commission to visit the South American republics in the interests of reciprocity. He made a perilous voyage of over 34,000 miles, and being shipwrecked off the coast was taken to England, whence he returned to America. He met nearly every ruler in the southern continent, learned a great deal about the conditions existing there, and his report to Congress was so exhaustive that he was called before a special committee to explain his views on reciprocity. On his return to Kansas he was again elected to the state senate, of which he was a member for the remainder of his life. He was president of the State Historical Society at the time of his death in Aug., 1895. He was a descendant of the exalted Peter Thacher of Queen Elizabeth's time, of Rev. Thomas Thacher, who landed at Boston in 1635, the first member of the family to come to America, and of Rev. Peter Thacher of Revolutionary times.