John Eliot (missionary)
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| Born | 1604 Widford, Hertfordshire, England |
| Died | May 21, 1690 |
| Occupation | Puritan missionary to Native Americans |
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John Eliot (c. 1604 – May 21, 1690) was a Puritan missionary to the American Indians whom some called “the apostle to the Indians” and the founder of Roxbury Latin School in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1645.
John Eliot was born in Widford, Hertfordshire, England and lived at Nazeing as a boy. He attended Jesus College, Cambridge. After college, he became assistant to Thomas Hooker at a private school at Little Baddow, Essex. After Hooker was forced to flee to Holland, Eliot emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts, arranging passage as chaplain on the ship Lyon and arriving on November 3, 1631. Eliot became minister and "teaching elder" at the First Church in Roxbury.
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. 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.
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