Andrew Eliot

Who was Andrew Eliot?

Andrew Eliot was a prominent Boston Congregational minister of the New North Church. He graduated from Harvard University in 1737 and received his AM from the same institution in 1740. During the American Revolutionary War, he was one of the few ministers to remain in Boston during the siege. He was the father of John Eliot, one of the co-founders of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

He is the namesake of one of the main characters in fellow Harvard graduate Erich Segal's The Class. Reverend Andrew Eliot was married to a cousin of Aaron Burr and, in a series of weekly letters from January 1777 to August 1778, he detailed the extent of spy participation by Thaddeus Burr. These missives were inherited by noted Long Island television and radio personality Bernadine Fawcett.