He represented Mendon in the Legislature and helped elect Charles Sumner to the Senate in 1851.

He was generally sociable and cheerful, but subject to occasional periods of depression of spirits, when he liked to remain in solitude until the time of gloom passed by.
Adin Thayer's education was chiefly in the district schools of his neighborhood.

Hosea Biglow may be taken as the type of the ordinary Yankee country boy of that day.

Adin had the advantage, better, if you can have but one, than any university, of being brought up in the country.

He was a member of that absolute democracy, the old-fashioned New England country town, where character and worth were the only titles to respect in the community, where the son of a President or the son of a Senator or of a Governor stood on an absolute and entire social equality with the son of the washerwoman.