Francis Bowes Sayre (1885-1972) was an American law teacher and public official. He was responsible for negotiating the treaties with European powers which ended extraterritoriality in Thailand.

Francis Sayre was born on April 30, 1885, in South Bethlehem, Pa., the son of Robert Heysham Sayre (1824-1907), a civil engineer and official of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. He graduated from Williams College in 1909 and from the Harvard Law School in 1912. Theodore Roosevelt assisted in obtaining his first job, as a deputy assistant to the district attorney of New York County. He married Jessie Woodrow Wilson, daughter of President Woodrow Wilson, in a White House ceremony in 1913.

Offered a position as instructor in government and assistant to the president of Williams College, Sayre returned there in 1914 and then went back to the Harvard Law School in 1917 to study for the doctorate in jurisprudence, which he received in 1918. He remained on the Harvard...