Solon Otis Thacher, (1830-1895), was an able lawyer, judge, and public man of Kansas, achieving as wide a fame as anyone of the pioneers in the great work of promoting friendly relations with the republics of South America.

He was born at Hornellsville, New York, August 31, 1830. After graduating from Alfred Academy and Union College and from the Albany Law School, he married Sarah M. Gilmore. In 1858 they located to Lawrence, where he became one of the proprietors of the Lawrence Republican. In 1859, he was elected a delegate to the Wyandotte Constitution Convention. On the adoption of the constitution, he was appointed the judge of the Fourth Judicial District in 1861. From 1880, he was engaged in the practice of law.

Mr. Thacher was a member of the first Board of Regents of the University of Kansas, 1865-68; he served in this capacity at several later times as well. He held the chair of equity jurisprudence in the University of Kansas Law School. In 1880, he was elected to the State Senate. Judge Thacher's international mission on behalf of reciptrocity is thus narrated: "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 hes views of reciprocity."

On his return to Kansas, Judge Thacher 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. He died at his home in Lawrence in August, 1895.