Thomas Lamb Eliot

Thomas Lamb Eliot ( – ) was an American Unitarian minister and a community leader in Portland, Oregon. He was a founder of Reed College, president of the Oregon Humane Society, a director of the Portland Art Association, and director of the Library Association of Portland. He was a minister of the First Unitarian Church of Portland.

Early life and education 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. He came from a prominent St. Louis family of Unitarians; one of his nephews was T. S. Eliot. An injury to his eyes interrupted his education at Washington University in St. Louis, which his father helped found and administer. 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 St. Louis 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.

He married Henrietta Robins Mack of St. Louis on November 28, 1865. E. Kimbark MacColl stated "Within a decade of his arrival in Portland... he became the city's most influential religious figure." Another wrote that Eliot "founded the First Unitarian Church, the Oregon Humane Society, and the Boys & Girls Aid Society; worked to improve conditions in the county jail; ministered to orphans, the poor, and the mentally ill; championed public schools, the public library, and women's right to vote." He was a board member of the "Portland Art Association and the Library Association of Portland, steering those organizations toward the founding of the Portland Art Museum and the Portland Public Library (now the Multnomah County Library)."