The Public Career of Maurice Hudson Thatcher

The public career of Maurice Hudson Thatcher was wedded to one of the most interesting epochs in Kentucky history and Kentucky politics. From 1895, with his election as county clerk of Butler County, to his defeat for the United States Senate in 1932, Maurice Thatcher was intimately involved in almost every statewide political campaign. He participated in the rise of the Republican party to a point where it was a definite force in state politics and won almost as many statewide races as it lost. He also participated in the party’s relegation to minority status with the advent of the depression of the 1930s. In the period from 1895 until 1932 he made politics his career and it served him well. Though he was admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1898, his private law practice was confined to only two brief periods in which he practiced his profession in Louisville. The remainder of his time was spent in politics, a profession he called “public service,” and which he found an honorable and rewarding one