Eliot, John, Dd

Eliot, John, D.D.

a Unitarian minister, was born in Boston, May 31, 1754. He prepared for college in the North Grammar-school in Boston, and in 1772 graduated from Harvard College. Soon after his graduation he took charge of a school in Roxbury, where he remained one year. He studied theology at Cambridge. In 1775 he commenced his labors as a preacher at Dover. In 1776 he received an earnest request from several leading members of the Episcopal Church at Halifax, N.S., to become an assistant to their aged pastor, but declined. He officiated for a short time as chaplain to the recruits of colonel Marshall's regiment, then raised in Boston for the expedition to Canada. After this he passed several months at Littleton as the assistant of Reverend Daniel Rogers, and during the winter of 1778-79 supplied the First Church in Salem. In 1779 he was ordained and installed pastor of the New North Church in the same town. In 1804 he was chosen a member of the corporation of Harvard College. He was also a member of most of the literary and charitable societies in Boston and vicinity, and in some of them he held important offices. Dr. Eliot died February 14, 1813. He published several single Sermons. See Sprague, Annals of the Amer. Pulpit, 8:92.