Many biographies of Eliot mention his ancestor Andrew Eliot who emigrated to Salem, Massachusetts in the late 1600s but fail to mention that his Yankee heritage extended even further back than that.
Another of Eliot's early Yankee ancestors was Deacon Samuel Chapin, a Puritan who in 1642 joined a group of American colonists deep in the wilderness of Massachusetts, a settlement that would become the city of Springfield.
Thomas Stearns (1710-1784) another of Eliot's ancestors (his mother was Charlotte Stearns) married Abigal Reed, a great-granddaughter of Chapin.
In Springfield there is a famous statue representing Chapin called The Puritan done by the noted American sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens circa 1887.
Exploring The Waste Land
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Url: http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/xqchapin.html File date: Sunday, September 29, 2002