Elliot family Mass.

The Eliot family is the American branch of one of several British families to hold this surname. This branch is based in Boston but originated in East Coker, Yeovil, Somerset. It is one of the Boston Brahmins, a bourgeois family whose ancestors had become wealthy and held sway over the American education system. All are the descendants of two men named Andrew Eliot, father and son, who emigrated from East Coker to Beverly, Massachusetts between 1668 and 1670. The elder Andrew (1627-March 1, 1703/04) served the town and colony in a number of positions and in 1692 was chosen as a juror in the Salem witch trials. His son Andrew (1651-September 12, 1688) married Mercy Shattuck in 1680 in Beverly and died by drowning after falling off a ship.

The ranks include several college presidents, one Nobel prize winner, and presidents of American professional associations. Charles W. Eliot transformed Harvard from a college to a research institution, a model which many American universities have followed. William Greenleaf Eliot co-founded Washington University in St. Louis in 1853, and Thomas H. Eliot was chancellor of that institution from 1962 to 1971. William Greenleaf Eliot's son Thomas Lamb Eliot went further west and was a seminal figure in the founding of Reed College in Portland, Oregon in 1911. The poet T. S. Eliot moved to England and his ashes were interred in East Coker, England. He wanted to be laid to rest in the original birthplace of his first American ancestor and other Eliot ancestors.

Another branch of the American Eliot family descends from Rev. John Eliot of Roxbury, Massachusetts, known as the "Apostle to the Indians." His son, John Eliot, Jr., was the first pastor of the First Church of Christ in Newton. In turn, John Eliot Jr.'s son, Joseph Eliot, became a pastor in Guilford, Connecticut, and later fathered Jared Eliot, a pastor and agricultural writer.

Well-known descendants of Andrew Eliot include:

Andrew Eliot, prominent Boston Congregational minister

Charles Eliot, landscape architect and son of Charles William Eliot, uncle of Thomas H. Eliot

Charles Eliot Norton, scholar and man of letters. He was first cousin to Charles William Eliot

Charles William Eliot, President of Harvard University, son of Samuel Atkins Eliot

Rev. Christopher Rhodes Eliot, Unitarian minister and author, son of William Greenleaf Eliot

Clara Eliot, economist at Barnard College, granddaughter of Thomas Lamb Eliot

Edward Cranch Eliot President of the American Bar Association

Frederick May Eliot, President of the American Unitarian Association 1937–1958, son of Christopher Rhodes Eliot

Henry Ware Eliot, businessman and President of the Academy of Science, St. Louis, son of William Greenleaf Eliot

Ida M. Eliot, writer, educator, philosopher, and entomologist, daughter of Thomas Dawes Eliot

John Eliot, co-founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society with Jeremy Belknap, the first such historical society of its kind, and son of Andrew Eliot

Martha May Eliot, a pediatrician and expert in public health; she served as director of the Children’s Bureau’s Division of Child and Maternal Health in the 1920s and 1930s, and is credited with drafting language on women and children in the Social Security Act. Martha May Eliot lived a quiet but public life as a lesbian with her lifelong domestic partner, Ethel Collins Dunham. She was a daughter of Christopher Rhodes Eliot.

Samuel Eliot, Boston banker and merchant

Samuel Atkins Eliot, politician who served in the United States House of Representatives, Massachusetts House of Representatives, and Massachusetts Senate; mayor of Boston; treasurer of Harvard University; son of Samuel Eliot and father of Charles William Eliot

Samuel Atkins Eliot II, President of the American Unitarian Association 1900–1927, son of Charles William Eliot

Samuel Atkins Eliot, Jr., novelist, son of Samuel Atkins Eliot II

Samuel Eliot, historian, educator, trustee of Massachusetts General Hospital, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Massachusetts Historical Society. He was the cousin of Charles Eliot Norton.

Samuel Eliot Morison, historian, Rear Admiral, United States Naval Reserve, grandson of Samuel Eliot

Thomas Dawes Eliot, U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts, brother of William Greenleaf Eliot

Thomas H. Eliot, Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, U.S. Congressman, son of Samuel Atkins Eliot II

Rev. Thomas Lamb Eliot, Regent and Trustee of Reed College, son of William Greenleaf Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot (better known as T. S. Eliot), Nobel prize winner, poet, playwright, literary critic and publisher, son of Henry Ware Eliot

Theodore Lyman Eliot I, president of San Francisco Art Institute, grandson of Charles William Eliot, brother of Thomas H. Eliot and Samuel Atkins Eliot Jr, father of Theodore Lyman Eliot II, brother-in-law of Albert Bigelow, the peace activist

Theodore Lyman Eliot II (United States Ambassador to Afghanistan, 1973–1978), nephew of Thomas H. Eliot and Samuel Atkins Eliot Jr, great-grandson of Charles William Eliot, great-great grandson of Samuel Atkins Eliot; Charles Eliot, the landscape architect, was his great-uncle

William Greenleaf Eliot, co-founder and third chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis

Andrew Eliot Rice, a founder of Peace Corps, grandson of Samuel Atkins Eliot II

Edward Samuel Ritchie, inventor and physicist, great-grandson of Andrew Eliot, the Boston minister

Joan R. Rosenblatt (née Joan Eliot Raup), statistician at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, daughter of Clara Eliot