Husband of Henrietta Robins (Mack) Eliot - Married 11/28/1865 in St. Louis, St. Louis Co., Missouri.



Thomas Lamb Eliot

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reverend Thomas Lamb Eliot (October 13, 1841 – April 28, 1936) was an Oregon pioneer, minister of one of the first churches on the west coast of the U.S., president of the Portland Children's Home, president of the Oregon Humane Society, a director of the Art Association, and director of the Library Association.

Thomas Lamb Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri as the first son of Rev. William Greenleaf Eliot, D.D., of the Church of the Messiah in St. Louis. An injury to his eyes interrupted his education at Washington University in St. Louis, which his father helped start and run. Hoping to improve his eyes, he sailed around Cape Horn to California in 1860 where Thomas Starr King said to him, "The Pacific Coast claims everyone who has ever seen it—there's Oregon!" His sight was not remedied by the trip, and upon his return, for several months of Divinity school he had to have his books read aloud to him.

Eliot was in the first class to graduate from Washington University in 1862. After graduation he enlisted in the Home Guard of Missouri, but served only within the state. For two years he ran a mission house for the poor of St. Louis connected to his father's church while studying with his father for the ministry.

He graduated from Harvard Divinity School in 1865, doing two years of study in one, despite eyesight so poor his books were often read to him. In 1866 he earned a Master of Arts from Washington University. He ministered in Louisville, Kentucky and, for several weeks at a spell, assisted the Church of the Messiah in New Orleans. He married Henrietta Robins Mack of St. Louis on November 28, 1865.

Eliot was recruited in 1867 by churches in Portland, Maine; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Portland, Oregon. He accepted the offer from Oregon, from a newly-built chapel, having wanted to relocate to the Pacific Northwest since his first trip to the west coast. He moved to Portland with Henrietta and their infant son, traveling through New York and Panama. By 1869 when Dorothea Dix visited Portland, Eliot began holding one service per month at institutions in town including the Insane Asylum of East Portland, the County Jail, and the County Farm. He also occasionally hosted services at the Oro Fino saloon. E. Kimbark MacColl stated "Within a decade of his arrival in Portland... he became the city's most influential religious figure." Eliot was the only minister to greet women's rights advocate Abigail Scott Duniway to Portland.