John Eliot (missionary) - Wikipedia John Eliot (missionary) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Puritan missionary to the American Indians For other people with the same name, see John Eliot. John Eliot Born 1604 Widford, Hertfordshire, England Died 21 May 1690(1690-05-21) (aged 85–86) Occupation Puritan missionary to Native Americans Signature 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. Contents 1 English education and Massachusetts ministry 1.1 Roxbury and Dorchester, Massachusetts 1.2 Use of the Massachusett language 2 Missionary career 3 Family 4 Death 5 Legacy 6 Works 7 See also 8 References 8.1 Bibliography 9 External links English education and Massachusetts ministry[edit] Cuckoos Farm, Little Baddow, Eliot's home around 1629 John Eliot was born in Widford, Hertfordshire, England and lived at Nazeing as a boy. He attended Jesus College, Cambridge.[4] After college, he became assistant to Thomas Hooker at a private school in Little Baddow, Essex.[5] After Hooker was forced to flee to the Netherlands, Eliot emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts, arranging passage as chaplain on the ship Lyon and arriving on 3 November 1631. Eliot became minister and "teaching elder" at the First Church in Roxbury.[3] From 1637 to 1638 Eliot participated in both the civil and church trials of Anne Hutchinson during the Antinomian Controversy. Eliot disapproved of Hutchinson's views and actions, and was one of the two ministers representing Roxbury in the proceedings which led to her excommunication and exile.[6] In 1645, Eliot founded the Roxbury Latin School. He and fellow ministers Thomas Weld (also of Roxbury), Thomas Mayhew of Martha's Vineyard, and Richard Mather of Dorchester, are credited with editing the Bay Psalm Book, the first book published in the British North American colonies (1640). From 1649 to 1674, Samuel Danforth assisted Eliot in his Roxbury ministry.[1] Roxbury and Dorchester, Massachusetts[edit] There are many connections between the towns of Roxbury and Dorchester and John Eliot. After working for a short time as pastor in Boston as the temporary replacement for Mr. John Wilson at Boston's first church society, John Eliot settled in Roxbury with other Puritans from Essex, England.[7] He was the teacher at The First Church in Roxbury for sixty years and was their sole pastor for forty years.[8] For the first forty years in Roxbury, Eliot preached in the 20' by 30 'foot meetinghouse with thatched roof and plastered walls that stood on Meetinghouse Hill. Eliot founded the Roxbury Grammar School and he worked hard to keep it prosperous and relevant.[8] Eliot also preached at times in the Dorchester church, he was given land by Dorchester for use in his missionary efforts. And in 1649 he gave half of a donation he received from a man in London to the schoolmaster of Dorchester.[9] Use of the Massachusett language[edit] The chief barrier to preaching to the American Indians was language.[8] Gestures and pidgin English were used for trade but could not be used to convey a sermon. John Eliot began to study the Massachusett or Wampanoag language, which was the language of the local Indians.[10] To help him with this task, Eliot relied on a young Indian[3] named "Cockenoe".[11][10] Cockenoe had been captured in the Pequot War of 1637[12] and became a servant of an Englishman named Richard Collicott.[10][13] John Eliot said, "he was the first that I made use of to teach me words, and to be my interpreter."[10] Cockenoe could not write but he could speak Massachusett and English. With his help, Eliot was able to translate the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and other scriptures and prayers.[10] The first time Eliot attempted to preach to Indians (led by Cutshamekin) in 1646 at Dorchester Mills,[14] he failed and said that they, "gave no heed unto it, but were weary and despised what I said."[10] The second time he preached to the Indians was at the wigwam of Waban near Watertown Mill which was later called Nonantum, now Newton, MA.[10] John Eliot was not the first Puritan missionary to try to convert the Indians to Christianity but he was the first to produce printed publications for the Algonquian Indians in their own language.[10] This was important because the settlements of "praying Indians" could be provided with other preachers and teachers to continue the work John Eliot started.[10] By translating sermons to the Massachusett language, John Eliot brought the Indians an understanding of Christianity but also an understanding of written language. They did not have an equivalent written "alphabet" of their own and relied mainly on spoken language and pictorial language.[15] Missionary career[edit] First Bible printed in New World, 1663 An important part of Eliot's ministry focused on the conversion of Massachusett and other Algonquian Indians. Accordingly, Eliot translated the Bible into the Massachusett language and published it in 1663 as Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God.[16] It was the first complete Bible printed in the Western hemisphere; Stephen Daye printed 1,000 copies on the first printing press in the American colonies.[17] In 1666, Eliot published "The Indian Grammar Begun", again concerning the Massachusett language. As a missionary, Eliot strove to consolidate the Algonquian Indians in planned towns, thereby encouraging them to recreate a Christian society. At one point, there were 14 towns of so-called "Praying Indians", the best documented being at Natick, Massachusetts. Other praying Indian towns included: Littleton (Nashoba), Lowell (Wamesit, initially incorporated as part of Chelmsford), Grafton (Hassanamessit), Marlborough (Okommakamesit), a portion of Hopkinton that is now in the Town of Ashland (Makunkokoag), Canton (Punkapoag), and Mendon-Uxbridge (Wacentug).[18] In 1662, Eliot witnessed the signing of the deed for Mendon with Nipmuck Indians for "Squinshepauk Plantation". Eliot's better intentions can be seen in his involvement in the legal case, The Town of Dedham v. The Indians of Natick, which concerned a boundary dispute. Besides answering Dedham's complaint point by point, Eliot stated that the colony's purpose was to benefit the Algonquian people.[18] Praying Indian towns were also established by other missionaries, including the Presbyterian Samson Occom, himself of Mohegan descent. All praying Indian towns suffered disruption during King Philip's War (1675), and for the most part lost their special status as Indian self-governing communities in the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, in some cases being paid to move to Wisconsin and other areas further West.[19] Eliot also wrote The Christian Commonwealth: or, The Civil Policy Of The Rising Kingdom of Jesus Christ, considered the first book on politics written by an American, as well as the first book to be banned by a North American governmental unit. Written in the late 1640s, and published in England in 1659, it proposed a new model of civil government based on the system Eliot instituted among the converted Indians, which was based in turn on the government Moses instituted among the Israelites in the wilderness (Exodus 18). Eliot asserted that "Christ is the only right Heir of the Crown of England," and called for an elected theocracy in England and throughout the world. The accession to the throne of Charles II of England made the book an embarrassment to the Massachusetts colony. In 1661 the General Court forced Eliot to issue a public retraction and apology, banned the book and ordered all copies destroyed. In 1709 a special edition of the Massachusett Bible was co-authored by Experience Mayhew and Thomas Prince with the Indian words in one column and the English words in the opposite column. The 1709 Massachusett Bible text book is also referred to as the Massachusett Psalter. This 1709 edition is based on the Geneva Bible, like the Eliot Indian Bible. Family[edit] John Eliot married Hanna Mumford in September of 1632, the first entry in the "Marages of the Inhabitants of Roxbury" record.[20] They had six children, five sons and one daughter.[21] Their daughter Hannah Eliot married Habbakuk Glover .[22] Their son, John Eliot, Jr., was the first pastor of the First Church of Christ in Newton,[23] Another son, Joseph Eliot, became a pastor in Guilford, Connecticut, and later fathered Jared Eliot, a noted agricultural writer and pastor. John Eliot's sister, Mary Eliot, married Edward Payson, founder of the Payson family in America, and great-great-grandfather of the Rev. Edward Payson. He was also an ancestor of Lewis E. Stanton a United States attorney for the District of Connecticut. He is related to the Bacon family. Death[edit] Eliot died in 1690, aged 85, his last words being "welcome joy!" His descendants became one branch of a Boston Brahmin family. 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.[24] The liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) remembers Eliot with a feast day on 21 May. Puritan "remembrancer" Cotton Mather called his missionary career the epitome of the ideals of New England Puritanism.[25] William Carey considered Eliot alongside the Apostle Paul and David Brainerd (1718–47) 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).[26] 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.[27] The school continues near its original location today, with continued admissions of all ethnicities, but now includes lifelong learning.[28] The town of Eliot, Maine which was in Massachusetts during its incorporation was named after John Eliot. Works[edit] trans., The Book of Genesis, 1655. trans., The Psalter, 1658. The Christian Commonwealth: or The Civil Policy Of The Rising Kingdom of Jesus Christ, 1659 A Christian Covenanting Confession, 1660. trans., Wusku Wuttestamentum Nullordumun Jesus Christ (New Testament), 1661. trans., Mamvsse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God (The Holy Bible containing the Old Testament and the New), 1663, rev. ed. 1685. The Indian Grammar Begun, 1666. Brief Narrative of the Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New England, in the Year, 1670 The Logic Primer, 1672. The Harmony of the Gospels in the holy History of the Humiliation and Sufferings of Jesus Christ, from his Incarnation to his Death and Burial, 1678. Nehtuhpeh peisses ut mayut, A Primer on the Language of the Algonquian Indians, 1684. See also[edit] John Eliot Square District References[edit] ^ a b Moore, Martin (1822). The Life and Character of Rev. John Eliot, Apostle of the N.A. Indians. Boston: T. Bedlington. rev john elliot. ^ "English Bible History: John Eliot". The Great Site. Retrieved 7 August 2013. ^ a b c Walker, Williston (1911). "Eliot, John" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. 9 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 277–278. ^ "Elliott, John (ELT618J)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge. ^ "Hooker, Thomas (HKR604T)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge. ^ Battis, Emery (1962). Saints and Sectaries: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 189–246. ^ "john Eliot" Dictionary of American Biography.New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936.Biography in Context. Web 29 Nov.2014 ^ a b c "John Eliot" Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Biography in Context.Web.29 Nov. 2014. ^ "The Dartmouth Copy of John Eliot's Indian Bible (1639): Its Provenance". Dartmouth.edu. Retrieved 27 October 2016. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Promoting and Propagating the Gospel". Jesus College Cambridge. Archived from the original on 15 August 2016. Retrieved 27 October 2016. ^ "John Eliot's first Indian teacher and interpreter, Cockenoe-de-Long Island : and the story of his career from the early records : Tooker, William Wallace, 1848–1917 : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive". Archive.org. Retrieved 27 October 2016. ^ [1][dead link] ^ [2][dead link] ^ "John Eliot", Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936. Biography in Context. Web 29 Nov.2014 ^ "John Eliot". Greatsite.com. Retrieved 27 October 2016. ^ A Short History of Boston by Robert J. Allison, p.14 ^ the Bay Psalm Book exhibition at the Library of Congress 2015 ^ a b Carpenter, John B. (2002) "New England Puritans: The Grandparents of Modern Protestant Missions." Fides et Historia 30.4, 526. ^ Goddard, Ives and Kathleen J. Bragdon (eds.; 1989) Native Writings in Massachusett. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. P.2-15. ^ Wilson, James Grant; Fiske, John, eds. (1888). Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography. D. Appleton. p. 323. ^ Genealogy of the Descendants of John Eliot, "apostle to the Indians," 1598-1905 By William Horace Eliot (jr.) ^ ("Habbacuke Glover was married to Hannah Eliott daughter of John Eliott teacher of the Church of Christ at Roxbury 4th -- 3rd month by Thomas Dudley Dept. Govr." - Massachusetts Town Vital Records, NEHGS) ^ "Old East Parish Burying Ground, 1st Settlers Monument - Middlesex County, Massachusetts". Interment.net. Archived from the original on 23 January 2008. Retrieved 27 October 2016. ^ "School History". Retrieved 9 September 2013.[permanent dead link] ^ Mather, Cotton (1694). The Life and Death of the Reverend John Eliot. London: J. Dunton. OCLC 765802652. ^ Carpenter, John, (2002) "New England Puritans: The Grandparents of Modern Protestant Missions," Fides et Historia 30,4, 529. ^ "Jamaica Plain Historical Society - 'Colonial Era' Editor - - Eliot School in Session Here Since 1676". Jphs.org. 21 January 2005. Archived from the original on 22 January 2017. Retrieved 27 October 2016. ^ "Classes in Crafts & Fine Arts for All Ages". Eliot School. Retrieved 27 October 2016. Bibliography[edit] Carpenter, John. "New England Puritans: The Grandparents of Modern Protestant Missions." Fides et Historia 30, no. 4, (October 2002). Cesarini, J. Patrick. "John Eliot's 'A Brief History of the Mashepog Indians,' 1666." The William and Mary Quarterly 65, no. 1 (2008): 101-134. Cogley, Richard. John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians before King Philip’s War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Dippold, Steffi. "The Wampanoag Word: John Eliot’s Indian Grammar, the Vernacular Rebellion, and the Elegancies of Native Speech." Early American Literature 48, no. 3 (2013): 543–75. Francis, John Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians, in "Library of American Biography," volume 5 (Boston, 1836). Winsor, Memorial History of Boston, volume 1 (Boston, 1880–81). Walker, Ten New England Leaders (New York, 1901). The Eliot Tracts: with letters from John Eliot to Thomas Thorowgood and Richard Baxter (London, 2003). "Massachusetts Town Vitals Collection 1620-1988" record for Habbacuke Glover. External links[edit] Color oil portrait of John Eliot, by unidentified artist, 1659, from the Natick Historical Society site Cambridge University - John Eliot Biography Cambridge University - John Eliot Exhibition Eliot School The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ / Wusku Wuttestamentum Nul-Lordumun Jesus Christ Nuppoquohwussuaeneumun (Cambridge: 1661) digitized by the John Carter Brown Library Manitowompae pomantamoonk sampwshanau Christianoh uttoh woh an pomantog wnssikkitteahonat God (Cambridge: 1665) digitized by the John Carter Brown Library The Indian grammar begun (Cambridge: 1666) digitized by the John Carter Brown Library Eliot, Ellsworth (1900). "Eliot, John" . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. Saints portal Authority control BNF: cb12065426p (data) GND: 118681966 ISNI: 0000 0000 8083 8946 LCCN: n80015550 NLI: 000426393 NLK: KAC201718137 NLP: A2943211X NTA: 119500264 PLWABN: 9810610808705606 SELIBR: 284374 SNAC: w67h1hkc SUDOC: 028917715 VIAF: 4952352 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n80015550 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Eliot_(missionary)&oldid=999543034" Categories: 1600s births 1690 deaths 17th-century Christian clergy Alumni of Jesus College, Cambridge American Congregationalist ministers American lexicographers Kingdom of England emigrants to Massachusetts Bay Colony American political writers American male non-fiction writers American religious writers American evangelicals Founders of schools in the United States Congregationalist missionaries in the United States Congregationalist writers Creators of writing systems People of colonial Massachusetts Massachusetts colonial-era clergy 17th-century New England Puritan ministers People from Widford, Hertfordshire Translators of the Bible into indigenous languages of the Americas English Congregationalist missionaries Burials in Boston 17th-century philanthropists 17th-century translators Hidden categories: Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference All articles with dead external links Articles with dead external links from October 2016 Articles with dead external links from November 2017 Articles with permanently dead external links Articles with short description Short description matches Wikidata Use dmy dates from September 2019 Biography with signature Articles with hCards Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLI identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLK identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLP identifiers Wikipedia articles with NTA identifiers Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikisource Languages العربية Български Deutsch Español Français Frysk 한국어 Italiano Latina مصرى Nederlands Norsk bokmål Português Русский Suomi Svenska Українська Edit links This page was last edited on 10 January 2021, at 18:43 (UTC). 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