1896 Joseph H. Walker, Republican, had been reelected for a fifth term as representative in congress from the third Massachusetts district, the last time by a plurality of 11,800 votes. In 1898 Mr. Thayer was made the Democratic candidate for representative to the fifty-sixth Congress with Representative Walker as his opponent; and he was elected, receiving 11,167 votes to 11,008 votes for Walker. The same year Roger Wolcott, Republican, received in the district 6,195 plurality.
Representative Thayer was made a member of the committees on Banking and Currency and on Indian Affairs. He was reelected in 1900 to the fifty-seventh Congress by a majority of 130 votes, his opponent being C. G. Washburn, Republican. He was continued on the committee on Banking and Currency and was placed on the committee on Territories in the fifty-seventh Congress. He was reelected in 1902 to the fifty-eighth Congress. These repeated successes of Mr. Thayer in a strong Republican district which at each election went for the remaining Republican candidates on the state and national ticket with majorities ranging from seven to nine thousand, are among the greatest political honors conferred upon any citizen of Massachusetts for the past fifty years, and are to be compared with the phenomenal success of William E. Russell, Democrat, who was elected three successive terms as governor of Massachusetts. Mr. Thayer declined renomination in 1904, from financial and family considerations, and again took up the practice of his profession. In 1904 his name was prominently mentioned as an available Democratic candidate for governor of the commonwealth. But Mr. Thayer took and has adhered to the determination that he would accept no nomination to any office until he had served out the full congressional term—that in this way alone he could best show his high appreciation of the exceptional honor the people of his district had conferred upon him by electing him three times to congress in this immensely Republican district. Had he accepted the nomination for governor under the conditions which existed in Massachusetts in 1904, it seems probable that he would have been elected.
Mr. Thayer was married January 31, 1873, to Charlotte D., daughter of Pitt and Diana (Perrin) Holmes of Worcester, Massachusetts. He was brought up a Unitarian but became an Episcopalian with Unitarian tendencies. He was a trustee of Worcester City hospital for eight years and has been a trustee of Nichols
