Ellsworth Eliot

“ The Indians showed great willingness to receive the gospel, requesting that their children might find homes with their white friends in order that they might be trained in the right way, and some adults sought employment with the settlers, that they might receive instruction in the truths of Christianity. It was then believed by many that these Indians were the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, and this opinion was an additional incentive for efforts to convert them. ”

“ Eliot was convinced that the Indians must give up their roving habits and become members of settled communities before they could make much progress in the Christian life. Natick, seventeen miles southwest of Boston, a place “somewhat remote from the English,” was selected as a very advantageous place for a town, and thither the Indians at Nonantum, and other “praying Indians,” as the converts were called, removed in 1651. ”

“ Mr. Eliot's manner must have been particularly attractive, judging from the accounts of his contemporaries and of several strangers who visited him. Dankers & Sluyter, agents for the Labadist community, in the record of their visit made in 1680, speak of him as “a very old man, named John Eliot, as the best of the ministers who we have yet heard” in Boston and its vicinity. John Dunton, a bookseller from London, describes him in 1686 as “the glory of Roxbury, as well as of all New England” ”

“ A copy of this edition was sold at auction a few years ago for $1,250. The second edition of the New Testament was published at Cambridge in 1680, and this, bound with the Old Testament (1685) , the Psalms in metre, and the Catechism, complete the second edition of the Indian Bible. These editions can not be regarded as very rare, since between fifty and sixty copies (many of them imperfect) are owned in this country. The finest collection of them is in the Lenox library, New York. There are copies that show signs of much use, and some have autographs and other manuscript of Indian owners. ”

“ He retained this charge till his death, and while discharging in full measure the duties of his office he found time to make himself eminently useful and famous as a physician, an agriculturist, a scientific investigator, and an author. ”

“ Appletons' Eliot John Nonantum memorial that part of Roxbury commonly called Jamaica, or the Pond Plain, for the teaching and instructing the children of that end of the town (together with such Indians and negroes as shall or may come to the said school) ,” etc. His remains were placed in the parish tomb in the old burying-ground at Roxbury. No authentic likeness of him exists. The accompanying picture is known as the Whiting portrait of the “apostle,” but there is no authority for the statement that it is a representation of John Eliot. ”

“ Eliot and others. The principal part of the expense of these and other publications, as well as the salaries of those engaged in labors among the Indians, was defrayed by “A Corporation for the Promoting and Propagating the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England,” established in London in 1649. In 1653 or 1654 Mr. Eliot's Catechism, probably the first book in the Indian language, was printed at Cambridge. No copy can be found. Another edition was printed in 1662. Genesis and Matthew, in Indian, were printed in 1665; but no copy is known. ”