WILLIAM GREENLEAF ELIOT

Background

William Greenleaf Eliot was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the son of William Greenleaf and Margaret (Dawes) Eliot.

Education

After the War of 1812 his parents moved to Washington, D. C. , where he went to school.

He graduated from Columbian College in 1829, and from Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1834.

Career

He was ordained in the following August. Wishing to identify himself with the West, he accepted an invitation from St. Louis to go there for the purpose of establishing a church. He organized the First Congregational Society within two months after his arrival in January 1835, and by October 1836 the first building had been erected. During the next fifteen years his church outgrew its equipment, and a second building, The Church of the Messiah, was dedicated in December 1851. During these years he traveled extensively for his church, in accordance with the terms of his ordination, stimulating the erection of church edifices and persuading promising ministers to accept their pulpits. In 1853 Eliot Seminary (later Washington University) was created by a state charter, and the corporation was organized on Feb. 22, 1854. Within another year two further projects were launched: O’Fallon Polytechnic Institute, turned over to the city in 1868, and Smith Academy, which in 1857 was absorbed by the newly created Washington University. Mary Institute, now a flourishing secondary school for girls still connected with the University, was established in 1859. Eliot remained president of the board until 1870, when he became acting chancellor on the death of President Chauvenet. Two years later he was made chancellor. Pie resigned his position as pastor of his church in 1870, and was given the title of pastor emeritus. Eliot was a political and philosophical liberal. He was in favor of the gradual emancipation of slaves as early as 1834. He promoted this cause in many ways until its realization and then turned his energies toward the establishment of a workable status for the freedmen. After the Civil War these interests led him into other fields. He advocated temperance reform, woman suffrage, and in his last years he struggled successfully to prevent the establishment of legalized prostitution in St. Louis. He labored to keep Missouri in the Union, working intimately with the local loyalist government, the federal forces, and the Washington government. He secured an order from General Fremont in September 1861, for the creation of the Western Sanitary Commission, which attended the armies west of the Alleghanics. He and four others served without pay in its administration until its dissolution in 1871. In 1848 he was elected president of the St. Louis school board, whose finances had made free educational work impossible, and by June 1849—the most disastrous year the city had known—he had conceived, and had secured the enactment into state law of a provision for a mill tax for educational purposes which permanently established the financial foundation of the public school system of St. Louis. In addition to his other interests, Eliot was a philanthropist. He was the founder of the Mission Free School in 1856, president of the State Institute for the Blind in 1853, and director in many charitable agencies.

Achievements

• He was the founder of the Mission Free School in 1856, president of the State Institute for the Blind in 1853, and director in many charitable agencies. He raised sums of money which were immense for his day. The Western Sanitary Commission and Washington University each required millions, and his church assumed heavy charitable and missionary obligations.

Works

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  • The Discipline of Sorrow

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Discourses on the Doctrines of Christianity

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Lectures to Young Men, Delivered in the Church of the Messiah

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The Story of Archer Alexander from Slavery to Freedom March 30, 1863

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

Religion

He organized the First Congregational Society within two months after his arrival in January 1835, and by October 1836 the first building had been erected.

Politics

He labored to keep Missouri in the Union, working intimately with the local loyalist government, the federal forces, and the Washington government.

Membership

First Congregational Society

president of the St. Louis school board

founder of the Mission Free School in 1856, president of the State Institute for the Blind in 1853, and director in many charitable agencies

Personality

He was a frail man and of small stature. “The contrast was almost pathetic between the smallness of his physical resources and the magnitude of [his] enterprises. ” He often needed to take extended periods for travel and rest and it was on one of these enforced vacations that he died at Pass Christian. His writings were almost all incidental. He did, however, dramatize the tragedy of slavery in his “Story of Archer Alexander” (1885).

Connections

Eliot married Abby A. Cranch, daughter of William Cranch in 1837.

Father:

William Greenleaf Eliot

Mother:

Margaret (Dawes) Eliot

Wife:

Abby A. Cranch