Eli Thayer was an educator, an inventor, and an eloquent anti-slavery speaker, but he was best known to Kansas as the founder of the New England Emigrant Aid Company. He originated the idea of organized emigration to Kansas and made his plans so practical that the idea was successfully executed and thereby helped in large measure to save the state from slavery.

Mr. Thayer was born at Mendon, Massachusetts in 1819. In 1845, he graduated from Brown University and 1848 established at Worcester, Massachusetts, The Oread Institute, a school for young women. It was situated on a hill and from it the hill in Lawrence was named Mount Oread. In The Life of Charles Robinson it states, “The first party sent out by the New England Aid Company numbering twenty-nine man pitched 25 tents on the north side of Mount Oread, and the emigrants ate their first real meal near where the Old University stood (Old North College). In a day or two they moved off the hill, which they named Mount Oread after Mr. Thayer’s home and the Young Ladies Institute on Mt. Oread in Worchester, Mass., and camped near the Kaw.”

At first, he organized the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company, but soon afterwards he reorganized it under the name of the New England Emigrant Aid Company. By July 17, 1854, the Company erected saw mills, hotels, and encouraged the starting of newspapers, churches, and schools, in short tried to help the new settlers in every way possible.

Thayer’s History of the Kansas Crusade was published in 1889. Thayer died in 1899.

This picture copied from a daguerreotype, was found in the vault with Professor Carruth’s papers and pictures, which he had given to the library.