Eliot, Frederick May, 1889-1958. Papers, 1920-1945.

Frederick May Eliot (1889-1958) was born in Boston and graduated Harvard College with an AB in 1911 and an AM in 1912. He was a Harvard College instructor of government in 1912-1913 and attended Harvard Divinity School from 1912 to 1915. He was ordained to the Unitarian ministry in 1915 at the First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also served at the Unity Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. He served as president of the Young People's Religious Union from 1916 to 1918 and served as an army chaplain in France during World War I from 1918 to 1919. He chaired the Unitarian Commission on Appraisal from 1934 to 1937. In 1937 he was elected president of the American Unitarian Association and held the post until his death in 1958. While president, he established the Unitarian Service Committee in 1940 in order to aid Europeans under the Nazi regime. He served as a trustee of Mount Holyoke College (Massachusetts) from 1940 to 1958, and the College designated its religious services building as the Eliot House. He was chaplain of the Massachusetts State Senate from 1948 to 1948 and again from 1951 to 1958. He was on the Board of the Massachusetts Bible Society, served as a director of the American Civil Liberties Union, and was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He authored The Unwrought Iron: An Introduction to Religion (1920).