John Eliot (missionary)
John Eliot (c. 1604 – 21 May 1690) was a Puritan missionary to the American Indians who some called "the apostle to the Indians"[1][2][3] and the founder of Roxbury Latin School in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1645. In 1660 he completed the enormous task of translating the Eliot Indian Bible into the Massachusett Indian language, producing more than two thousand completed copies.
For other people with the same name, see John Eliot.
John Eliot
1604
21 May 1690 (aged 85–86)
Puritan missionary, and religious teacher to American Indians
Death[edit]
Eliot died in 1690, aged 85, his last words being "welcome joy!" His descendants became one branch of a Boston Brahmin family. The historic cemetery in Roxbury, Massachusetts, was named Eliot Burying Ground.
Legacy[edit]
Natick remembers him with a monument on the grounds of the Bacon Free Library. The John Eliot Elementary School in Needham, Massachusetts, founded in 1956, is named after him.[29] Puritan "remembrancer" Cotton Mather called his missionary career the epitome of the ideals of New England Puritanism.[30] William Carey considered Eliot alongside the Apostle Paul and David Brainerd (1718–1747) as "canonized heroes" and "enkindlers" in his groundbreaking An Enquiry Into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen (1792).[31]
In 1689, he donated 75 acres (30 ha) of land to support the Eliot School in what was then Roxbury's Jamaica Plain district and now is a historic Boston neighborhood. Two other Puritans had donated land on which to build the school in 1676, but boarding students especially required support. Eliot's donation required the school (renamed in his honor) to accept both Black and Native American students without prejudice, which was very unusual at the time.[32] The school continues near its original location today, with continued admissions of all ethnicities, but now includes lifelong learning.[33]
The town of Eliot, Maine which was in Massachusetts during its incorporation was named after John Eliot.
Eliot appears in the alternate history 1632 Series anthology collection 1637: The Coast of Chaos. His wife is killed shortly after the birth of their first child by French soldiers invading the Thirteen Colonies. A group of time travelers bring a book about the world they come from that allows Eliot to read about how much of his works were undone by his fellow colonists, he then sets out to alter his missionary efforts in a manner that will prevent Native American converts from being vulnerable to the treachery they faced in the old timeline.
Elliot Tracts[34]
