Background
Yale was born on April 5, 1649 in Boston, British America, the son of David (b. 1613) and Ursula Yale, and the grandson of Thomas and Ann (Lloyd) Yale of Plas-Grono, near Wrexham, Denbighshire, Wales.
Yale was born on April 5, 1649 in Boston, British America, the son of David (b. 1613) and Ursula Yale, and the grandson of Thomas and Ann (Lloyd) Yale of Plas-Grono, near Wrexham, Denbighshire, Wales.
The Yale family left Boston and returned to England when Elihu was three years old and he grew up going to school in London.
In 1671 Elihu Yale was appointed a writer in the East India Company; he arrived at Fort Saint George (Madras) on June 23, 1672. Five years more found him a factor with doubled salary, his only civil function the judging of native cases at the Choultry. He became a member of the council, successfully negotiated a deal with the Marathas, and passed through the grades of mintmaster, customer, and bookkeeper to rank as the governor's valued second in command.
On July 25, 1687, he became president and governor of Fort Saint George. The Company found him a stanch support in its new policy of founding civil and military power in India. He ruthlessly suppressed piracy. He built Fort Saint David at Cuddalore, named for his son who died in 1687, but in the native wars had to acknowledge the supremacy of the Great Mogul.
In 1690 friction developed in the council between the governor and the new municipality of Madras. Bitter personal recriminations led to an administrative deadlock. Yale applied home for an arbiter, and found himself superseded when one appeared on October 23, 1692. He was charged, among many violent counts, with having favored the private trading ventures of his brother Thomas and himself at the Company's expense, and admitted that he had amassed a fortune of 500, 000 pagodas. Before his accounts were cleared he was compelled to disgorge at least 3, 000, for which he later petitioned the Company, and he was not permitted to sail for England until 1699. He settled in the old family estate of Plas-Grono, and was named high sheriff of Denbighshire in 1704. But he built also a mansion in Queen's Square, London, and carried on a diamond merchant's trade, corresponding with Gov. Thomas Pitt of Madras.
Through gifts to schools, churches, and missionary societies Yale acquired some reputation as a philanthropist. Learning of such propensities, Jeremiah Dummer, Connecticut's agent in London, suggested that the struggling Collegiate School at Saybrook might well reap the benefit, and of the books collected for the school in 1714 some forty volumes came from Yale. When a new building was begun at New Haven, the trustees appealed to Cotton Mather, who wrote Yale in January 1718 intimating that the name of Yale College might easily adorn his munificence with a fame more enduring than the pyramids. In June Yale sent over for the school three bales of goods, some books, and a portrait of George I by Kneller. The total gift was worth about 800 pounds; the goods were sold for 562, 126, the largest private contribution made the college for over a century. At the September commencement both the building and the school received their new name.
In 1720 Yale moved to the country, leasing from a son-in-law the manor of Latimers, Buckinghamshire. After his death on July 8, 1723, most of his goods were sold at auction; a few, including two tapestries and a portrait by Enoch Zeeman (1717), have since come into the possession of Yale College.
Yale married Catherine Hynmers, a widow, in 1680. The wedding took place at St. Mary's Church, at Fort St. George, where Yale was a vestryman and treasurer. The marriage was the first registered at the church.
President of Fort St George (Madras)