ELIOT, William Greenleaf, educator, born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, 5 August 1811; died at Pass Christian, Miss., 23 January 1887. His great-grandfather was brother to the great-grandfather of Charles William Eliot, president of Harvard. He was graduated at Columbian College, Washington, D. C., in 1831, and at Harvard Divinity School in 1834. In the latter year he was ordained pastor of the Church of the Messiah (Unitarian) in St. Louis, Missouri, a place that he held until 1872. During all this time he was energetically employed in improving the condition and advancing the interests of the public schools of St. Louis. A man of untiring energy and rare administrative ability, he was engaged in all sorts of public and philanthropic enterprises, and has probably done more for the advancement of St. Louis and the entire southwest than any other man that has lived in that section. He was always a bold and outspoken opponent of slavery.

In 1861 he was found among the small band of resolute men who assisted Generals Nathaniel Lyon and Francis P. Blair in preserving Missouri to the Union ; and during the war he was active in the western sanitary commission. In 1872 he was chosen to succeed Dr. Chauvenet as chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, and held the office until his death. He has published a "Manual of Prayer" (Boston, 1851); "Discourses on the Doctrines of Christianity" (Boston, 1852; 22d ed., 1886); " Lectures to Young Men" (1853; 11th ed., 1882); "Lectures to Young Women" (1853 ; 13th ed., enlarged, with the title "Home Life and Influenee," St. Louis, 1880); "The Unity of God" (Boston, 1854)" "Early Religious Education" (1855); " The Discipline of Sorrow" (1855): "The Story of Archer Alexander, from Slavery to Freedom" (Boston, 1885); and a great number of pamphlets, tracts, discourses, and review articles.