Brigadier General Sylvanus Thayer

Brigadier General Sylvanus Thayer. The "Father of West Point". , Sylvanus Thayer came to Washington in 1793 at the age of eight to live with his uncle Azariah Faxon in the house at the right. He attended school at the left, then a brick building, and worked in his uncle's store to earn money for an education in Engineering. In 1802, at 17, he taught in the same school before entering Dartmouth [C]ollege in 1803. He left in his senior year in March 1807, upon his appointment by President Thomas Jefferson as a cadet to the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. In Feb. 1808 he was commissioned a 2nd Lieut. in the Corps of Engineers, the 33rd graduate of the Academy. [I]n 1815 Maj. Thayer was sent to Europe by the War Dept. under President James Madison to make a study of Military Education and Military Engineering and collect 1,000 books on those subjects. In 1817 Maj. Thayer was appointed the fifth Superintendent of West Point by President James Monroe. During the next 16 years he established the Honor System, the Academic Board, the Board of Visitors, and other programs, regulations, and codes that characterize the Academy, [l]eaving as Supt. in 1833. He continued in Military Engineering and in 1857 Col. Thayer became the Commanding Officer of the U.S. Corps of Engineers. He retired as Brigadier General June 1, 1863, at 78. In 1871 he provided the funds to establish Thayer Public Library and Thayer Academy in Braintree, Mass. and the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. He died Sept. 7, 1872 at the age of 87 in Braintree, Mass., This tablet, dedicated by the U.S. Military Academy Aug. 7, 1976 during the Bicentennial of the Incorporation of the Town of Washington, and the American Revolution Bicentennial of the United States, commemorates the 14 formative years, 1793-1807, that Sylvanus Thayer spent here learning the precepts of Honor, Discipline, and Education, that form a Triangle of Leadership that portrays the traditional Code of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, 169 years ago.