Jared Eliot - Abraham Pierson, Eliot's Mentor

Abraham Pierson, Eliot's Mentor

Abraham Pierson graduated from Harvard in 1668, was ordained by his father and became minister of the Killingworth Congregational Church in 1694. When he became minister at Killingworth, Pierson began teaching his first classes in the parsonage. He taught in a meeting-house in Killingworth in 1700; this collegiate school is now part of Yale University. Since Pierson was an experienced minister he fell under the purview of the new charter of 1701 which stipulated that the college’s trustees were to be experienced ministers (preferably Congregationalists), residing in the colony. The charter also stated that the mission of the school was the “instruction of youth ‘in the arts and sciences,’ that they might be suitable for ‘public employment, both in church and civil state’”.

Eliot was one of Pierson’s favorite (and best-known) students. Due to Jared's intelligence and education, Pierson predicted that he (and Samuel Cooke, another student) would become school trustees; Eliot did so in 1730. In June 1707, Eliot was notified of Pierson’s death; he was ordained on the first of that month, fulfilling his father's wish for one of his sons to become a minister. In September, Jared became the third minister of the Killingworth church. When he assumed the position, the colonists promised that if he were to marry they would give him 60 loads of good firewood each winter. Jared married Hannah Smithson (daughter of Samuel Smithson of Brayfield, England) the following winter, and was minister at the Killingworth church until his death.

In addition to his ministerial duties, Eliot was a physician; he is quoted in an article by Rodney True that “it seems natural that the medical and ministerial professions should be thus combined”. A physician and a minister would be able to heal a person's body, mind and soul; a person combining both professions was known as a "clerical physician", as his father had been. Jared entered the medical profession in 1706, when there were 30 towns in New England with populations over 20,000. His dual role is attested; “it should not be surprising that both great names in Connecticut medicine in the century spanning 1650-1750 belong to the cleric-physicians Gershom Bulkeley and Jared Eliot”. Eliot succeeded Bulkeley as a leader in Connecticut medicine, training about 50 students. Eliot's successor as a physician was his son-in-law Benjamin Gale, who received Jared's practice in the mid-1740s. Benjamin was also a skilled physician, with a good reputation, and promoted matters of public welfare.