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| Sylvanus Thayer Birthplace The Sylvanus Thayer Birthplace was built in
1720 by Nathaniel Thayer (1658-1728) and is most The house was originally located on a
ninety-two acre site in Braintree Highlands near the Holbrook Line before the
Braintree Historical Society moved it nearly a mile to its current location on Click on the following images to see inside the Thayer House
General Sylvanus Thayer
West Point prepared Sylvanus for what would become a life-time of military service. He began his career as an engineering officer during the War of 1812, but is most famous for his work as Superintendent at the West Point Military Academy (1817-1833). At West Point, Thayer improved all the academic departments, hired the best available educators, instituted strict disciplinary standards, promoted scholarly excellence and achievement through challenging examinations, and established the first technological and engineering curriculum in the country. Thayer’s outstanding work transformed the Academy into a leading educational institution and earned him the nickname “The Father of West Point.” After leaving West Point, Thayer worked on
Forts Warren, Winthrop, and Independence in Boston Harbor before retiring from
the Army on June 1, 1863. Since he never married, he spent his later years
living in Braintree with his sister, Livia, and her husband, Dr. Jonathan
Wilde. Thayer |
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famous as the birthplace of General Sylvanus Thayer (1785-1872), also known as
“the Father of West Point.” The original oak-framed structure had four rooms;
two upstairs bedrooms and two downstairs rooms (a parlor and a hall), a large
central chimney, and leaded casement windows. A small shed, which was used as a
shoe shop, was added in 1755. A lean-to was added to the back of the house in
1760, which transformed the house into an elegant New England saltbox design.
The Thayer birthplace is one of only a handful of original saltbox homes still
around today.
Washington Street. The move began in 1957 when the Walworth Steel Company began
building a five million dollar plant on the Thayer Estate. The company gave
the house to the Society, who then began the task of restoring it. The
restoration project took several years but the house proved fairly easy to
restore because little remodeling had been done over the centuries. A large
percentage of the interior was original and modifications and updates had been
made by covering up the original interior elements rather than removing them.
The wide boards and interior trim used in the Thayer House restoration were
acquired from the unused Old Bass homestead in Quincy, which was built around
the same time as the Thayer house. The house is restored to the period of
General Thayer’s early childhood (1785-1793) and is furnished with period
antiques. 
General
Sylvanus Thayer, the fifth child of Nathaniel and Dorcas Faxon Thayer and the
house’s most famous occupant, was born here on June 9, 1785. At the age of
eight, his parents sent him to live in New Hampshire with his uncle, Azariah
Faxon, so that he could get a better education. Sylvanus remained with his uncle
until he was admitted to Dartmouth College in 1803. He graduated in 1807 before
entering the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, from which he graduated at the
top of his class on February 23, 1808. 
remained busy in retirement, founding the Thayer Public Library (opened 1874)
and the Thayer Academy school (opened 1877) in Braintree. In 1867, he also
founded and endowed the nation’s first graduate school of engineering, the
Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth. Thayer died in Braintree on
September 7, 1872 at the age of eighty-seven. 
