Edwin T. Thacher (1896-1966) [Section 56 Lot 24]
A Founder of Alcoholic Anonymous
Edwin ‘Ebby’ Throckmorton Thacher was born on April 29 1896. He was the youngest of five sons to George Hornell Thacher, Jr. and Emma Louise Bennett. The Thacher family made their fortune in the manufacturing of railroad wheels. Ebby was as grandson of George Hornell Thacher, who was Mayor of Albany during much of the Civil War and the beginning of Reconstruction. His uncle, John Boyd Thacher, served in the NYS Senate and later as Mayor of Albany at the end of the 1880s, and again in the mid-1890s. John Boyd Thacher Park is named in his honor. Ebby’s brother, John Boyd Thacher II, would also serve as Mayor from 1926 till 1941.
Ebby did not excel in academics like his elder brothers. In 1912 he was removed from Albany Academy for Boys by his parents and sent to Manchester, VT to attend Burr and Burton Seminary. His grades did not improve and he was eventually sent back to Albany Academy. However, during the year spent in Vermont he befriended Bill Wilson.
Back in Albany Ebby’s family gave up on the idea that he would be able to go to college. Around 1915 he was given a low-level job at the family’s railroad wheel and propeller factory, and he was later promoted to a purchasing agent. It was during this time that he began to drink heavily. In 1922 the company went out of business and both parents passed away at the end of the decade. He and his elder brothers received an inheritance from their deaths, however Ebby’s money was all lost in the stock market crash and in his many drinking sprees.
His brother, Mayor John Boyd Thacher II was a candidate to become the democratic candidate for Governor in 1932, a seat previously occupied by U.S. President-elect, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In the end, however, he did not get the nomination, and many suggested that Ebby’s reckless behavior in Albany was to blame. The Thacher family had spent their summers in Manchester for a couple of generations, and trying to appear as a perfect family they spent more time there and encouraged Ebby to live there all year.
In 1934 Ebby was arrested for crashing his car into the kitchen of a woman’s house, and he continued in a reoccurring state of drunkenness and depression throughout the summer. He was arrested two more times, and according to Vermont State law any person arrested three times in a year should serve a mandatory six-month sentence in jail.
His case came to the attention of Rowland Hazard, Cebra Graves and F. Shepard Cornell, who were leading members of the Oxford Group, a Christian organization that believed the roots of a person’s problems were fear and selfishness, and that troubled individuals could be refocused on sobriety and spirituality. They took Ebby under their wing with the blessing of the judge that if he came to court sober he would be cleared of all charges.
The charges against Ebby were dropped and he was invited to become a resident at the Calvary Rescue Mission, operated by the Calvary Episcopal Church in New York City. In the fall of 1934 he was in contact with his friend Bill Wilson to discuss how to overcome alcoholism, and together with Rowland Hazard they went on to found the national and international organization called Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935.
The Oxford Group emphasized the Four Absolutes (honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love), and Ebby became a “spiritual worker” at the Calvary Mission known as the “Brotherhood of the Twelve Men.” He continued to work at the mission until he moved away to live in the home of Bill and his wife, Lois.
After a time with Bill and Lois Ebby moved back to Albany and struggled with alcoholism for the rest of his life. His heavy tobacco use and alcoholism left him emaciated and eventually he developed emphysema. He moved to a family farm in Ballston Spa and spent the last two years of his life completely sober. He passed away on March 21, 1966 of a stroke, and he is buried in the Thacher family plot.