Abigail Adams Eliot
educator and authority on early childhood education (1892-1992)
Abigail Adams Eliot (October 9, 1892 – October 29, 1992) was an American educator and a leading authority on early childhood education. She was a founding member of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration's nursery school program in New England in the 1930s, and co-founded the Eliot Community Mental Health Center in Concord, Massachusetts. The Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study at Tufts University is named for Eliot and her colleague, Elizabeth W. Pearson.
Early life
Abigail Adams "Abby" Eliot was born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston on October 9, 1892, the youngest child of Reverend Christopher Rhodes Eliot and Mary Jackson (May) Eliot. The Eliots were a prominent Boston Brahmin family. Abby's father was a Unitarian minister and her grandfather, William G. Eliot, was the first chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis. Her sister, Martha May Eliot, became a nationally known public health specialist, and her brother, Frederick May Eliot, headed the Unitarian Association of America for many years. The poet, playwright, critic, and Nobel laureate T.S. Eliot was her first cousin.
After serving at the First Parish Church of Dorchester on Meeting House Hill for 13 years, Reverend Eliot became the minister and social worker at the Bulfinch Place Church in the West End, and the family moved to 2 West Cedar Street on Beacon Hill.
“Abigail Adams Eliot” enters the record as educator and authority on early childhood education (1892-1992). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Abigail, Adams and Eliot can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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