educator historian philanthropist
Samuel Eliot was born in Boston, the son of William Havard and Margaret Boies (Bradford) Eliot.
His father, a brother of Samuel Atkins Eliot, built the Tremont House, interested himself in the musical life of the city, and died suddenly in 1831 while a candidate for mayor.
His mother was a daughter of Alden Bradford.
Eliot graduated first in the class of 1839 at Harvard and after two uncongenial years in Robert Gould Shaw’s counting room went to Madeira and thence to Italy to recruit his health.
Through his ecclesiastical connections he became professor of history in Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, 1856-60, and president of the college, 1860-64.
While in Rome he conceived the idea of a history of liberty, to be complete in six parts of two volumes each.
In undertaking such a work he mistook literary ambition for capacity, and abandoned the project after some preliminary studies and four volumes of the history had been published.
His high regard for public education led him to serve as headmaster, 1872-76, of the Girls’ High and Normal School.
In 1878 he was appointed superintendent of the city schools.
He set to work with his customary energy and enthusiasm to enrich the curriculum and to improve the mode of instruction, but the state of his health compelled him to resign two years later and to make his third sojourn in Europe.
Besides a number of papers, lectures, and addresses, Eliot published a small, privately printed volume of translations from the Spanish poet, José Zorilla (1846) ; Passages from the History of Liberty ( 1847) ; The Liberty of Rome (2 vols. , 1849), which was revised to form Part I of the History of Liberty : Part I, The Ancient Romans; Part II, The Early Christians (4 vols. , 1853); and a Manual of United States History (1856; 4th ed. , rev. , 1874).
He edited Selections from American Authors (1879) and Poetry for Children (1879), refusing characteristically to accept compensation for his editorial work.
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A devout Episcopalian, he had formed a warm admiration for Thomas Arnold and consciously modeled his career upon Arnold’s.
Perhaps his most pervasive trait was his religious faith, which expressed itself equally in his simple fervid adherence to the dogmas of his church and in his selfless devotion to the needy, the suffering, and the oppressed of all creeds.
Trinity College, Hartford, Conn. , Massachusetts General Hospital, the Perkins Institute for the Blind, the Massachusetts School for Feeble Minded Youth, Harvard University, St. Paul’s School, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Boston Athenaeum
His manners were those of a Boston gentleman of the old school.
On June 7, 1853, he married Emily Marshall Otis, daughter of William Foster and Emily (Marshall) Otis of Boston.
