Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 2).djvu/345

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ELIOT
ELIOT
323

the Whiting portrait of the “apostle,” but there is no authority for the statement that it is a representation of John Eliot. His name is inscribed, with those of his successors in the ministry at Roxbury, upon a monumental structure that covers the tomb. There is a monument to his memory in the Indian burying ground at South Natick, a granite watering-trough at Canton, Mass., and a memorial structure at Newton, on or near the site of Nonantum, where the apostle first preached to the Indians. See the accompanying illustration. His life and labors have been the subject of numerous biographies, the first by Cotton Mather in 1691, and the best by Convers Francis in 1836 (vol. 5, Sparks's “American Biography”). 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”; and the narrative in French of the Jesuit Father Gabriel Dreuillettes, a missionary from Canada, who spent the night before Christmas in 1650 at the apostle's house, justifies the statement of the historian, Mr. Parkman, that “there was great sympathy between the two missionaries, and Eliot prayed his guest to spend the winter with him.” Before leaving England, Mr. Eliot had made a matrimonial engagement, and his betrothed came over in the year following his arrival. The first entry on the record of “Marages of the Inhabitants of Roxbury” is that of Mr. John Eliot and Hanna Mumford, 4 Sept., 1632. To use his own words, spoken at her funeral three years before his own death, she was a “dear, faithful, pious, prudent, prayerful wife.” Unusual honors were paid to her memory. Six children — a daughter and five sons — were born to them. Of the sons, but one survived their parents, the Rev. Joseph, who, as a “burning and shineing light,” ministered to the people of Guilford, Conn., from 1664 till 1694. From him descend all the posterity of the apostle bearing his surname. A genealogy of the descendants of John Eliot was published in 1854: Fitz-Greene Halleck; the Rev. Jared Eliot, of Killingworth (now Clinton), Conn., eminent as a minister, physician, and scientist in our colonial history; Prof. Elisha Mitchell, of the University of North Carolina, whose remains are at rest upon the highest peak of land in the United States east of Mississippi river, named Mt. Mitchell, in his honor; Charles Wyllys Elliott; and Ethelinda Eliot Beers, who wrote the poem “All Quiet along the Potomac” — are the most distinguished of his posterity. With his colleague, the Rev. Thomas Weld, and his neighbor, the Rev. Richard Mather, of Dorchester, Mr. Eliot translated into the Indian language the Psalms of David, and their work, the “Bay Psalm-Book,” was the first book printed in this country (Cambridge, Mass., 1640). It was reprinted and extensively used in England and Scotland, and a small edition was reprinted in Cambridge in 1862 as a curiosity. So rare has this book become that a copy has been sold for $1,200. There is one in the Lenox library, New York. In the tracts entitled “The Clear Sunshine of the Gospel,” “The Glorious Progress of the Gospel,” “The Light appearing more and more toward the Perfect Day,” “Strength out of Weakness,” “Tears of Repentance,” “A Late and Further Manifestation of the Progress of the Gospel,” “A Brief Narrative,” and in other communications, published mostly in London from 1647 till 1671, the methods employed, and the progress made in the conversion of the Indians, are set forth with much interesting detail by Mr. 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. Before the close of 1658 he published a translation of a few psalms in metre. The New Testament in Indian was printed at Cambridge in 1661. A few copies remain, one of which was sold a few years ago for $700. The libraries of the University of Edinburgh and the Congregational library in Boston, Mass., contain the only known copies (not alike) of “A Christian Covenanting Confession,” in Indian and English, which are thought to have been printed in 1660. In 1663 the Old Testament was printed. This, bound with the New Testament, a metrical version of the Psalms, and with a single leaf containing what has been called a Catechism, is known as the first edition of the Indian Bible — the first Bible printed in America. 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. The Psalter, as well as the New Testament, of the first edition was bound separately. Of the translation of Baxter's “Call to the Unconverted” (1664), no copy has been found; but of the second edition (1688) there are copies at Harvard college and in other libraries. An abridgment of Bishop Bayly's “Practice of Piety,” translated into Indian, was printed in 1665, and again in 1685. Yale college owns a copy. Of “The Indian Grammar Begun” (Cambridge, 1666), copies are in the John Carter Brown library at Providence, R. I., and in the Lenox library, New York. “The Indian Primer,” of which the only copy known is in the library of the University of Edinburgh, was printed at Cambridge in 1669. It has been reprinted. The last of Mr. Eliot's translations printed in his life-time, “The Sincere Convert,” by the Rev. Thomas Shepard, was published in 1689. Mr. Eliot's published books in the English language are: “The Christian Commonwealth” (London, 1659). This book is extremely rare, having been suppressed by the government because it was “full of seditious principles and notions in relation to all established governments in the Christian world, especially against the government established in their native country.” The author was induced to make public acknowledgment that he had “offended” in his opinions. “The Communion of Churches” (Cambridge, 1665). This book has been described as the first privately printed book in America. A copy is in the Lenox library. “Indian Dialogues” (Cambridge, 1671),