Eliot family
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- For the British noble family of St Germans, Cornwall, see Earl of St Germans
The Eliot family is a distinguished American family and is one of the Boston Brahmins, originating in Boston, whose ancestors became wealthy and held sway over the American education system. Charles W. Eliot transformed Harvard from a college to a research institution, a model which many American Universities have followed. William G. Eliot founded one of American’s major universities, Washington University in St. Louis. The ranks include several college presidents, one Nobel prize winner, and presidents of American professional associations. All are the descendants of Andrew Eliot (born January 30, 1651 from East Coker Yeovil, England, who married Mercy Shattuck in 1680 in Beverly, MA, and died at the age of 37 on September 12 in 1688 in Beverly, MA). T. S. Eliot was buried in East Coker, England. He wanted to be buried in the original birthplace of this ancestor and other Eliot ancestors.
Well-known members include:
- Edward Cranch Eliot[1] President of the American Bar Association
- T. S. Eliot Nobel prize winner
- William Greenleaf Eliot Co-Founder and third chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis
- Rev. Thomas Lamb Eliot President of Reed College
- Henry Ware Eliot President of the Academy of Sciences
- Rev. Christopher Rhodes Eliot
- Samuel Atkins Eliot, politician who served in the United States House of Representatives, Massachusetts House of Representatives, Massachusetts Senate and was also mayor of Boston and treasurer of Harvard University. He is the father of Charles William Eliot.
- Charles William Eliot President of Harvard University, son of Samuel Atkins Eliot
- Samuel Atkins Eliot II, Unitarian minister, son of Charles William Eliot
- Charles Eliot Norton, American scholar and man of letters. He was the first cousin to Charles William Eliot.
- Samuel Eliot, historian, educator, trustee of Massachusetts General Hospital, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Massachusetts Historical Society. He was the cousin of Charles Eliot Norton.
- Charles Eliot, landscape architect and son of Charles William Eliot, uncle of Thomas H. Eliot
- Thomas H. Eliot Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, U.S. Congressman, grandson of Charles William Eliot, great grandson of Samuel Atkins Eliot
- Samuel Atkins Eliot, Jr., American novelist, grandson of Charles William Eliot
- Theodore Lyman Eliot I, president of San Francisco Art Institute, grandson of Charles William Eliot, brother of Thomas H. Eliot and Samuel Atkins Eliot Jr, father of Theodore Lyman Eliot II. His brother-in-law was Albert Bigelow, the peace activist.
- Theodore Lyman Eliot II (United States Ambassador to Afghanistan, 1973 - 1978), nephew of Thomas H. Eliot and Samuel Atkins Eliot Jr, great grandson of Charles William Eliot, great-great grandson of Samuel Atkins Eliot. Charles Eliot, the landscape architect, is his great uncle.
- Martha May Eliot, was a granddaughter of Thomas H. Eliot. A pediatrician and expert in public health, she served as director of the Children’s Bureau’s Division of Child and Maternal Health in the 1920s and 1930s, and is credited with drafting language on women and children in the Social Security Act. Mary Martha Eliot lived a quiet but public life as a lesbian with her life-long domestic partner, Ethel Collins Dunham.
[edit] References
- The Family of William Greenleaf Eliot and Abby Adams Eliot, as Chronicled by their Descendants, to 1988 by Henry Eliot Scott (1988)
- Asticou Foreside, genealogy written by Charles W. Eliot II, 1981
- The Genealogy of the Somerset branch of the American Eliot Family
