Thomas Lamb Eliot

Who was Thomas Lamb Eliot?

Reverend Thomas Lamb Eliot 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.