Elias Cornelius Boudinot - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Born August 1, 1835 near Rome, Georgia, Boudinot was the son of Elias Boudinot, a Cherokee National leader, and his wife Harriet Ruggles Gold (1805–1836), a woman of English descent from Cornwall, Connecticut. They had met there when his father was a student at a school for Native Americans. His father served as editor of the Cherokee Phoenix from 1828-1832; it was the first newspaper founded by a Native American nation. He published articles in English and Cherokee, and had type cast for the syllabary developed by Sequoyah. The newspaper was distributed across the United States and internationally.

His parents named the boy after the missionary Elias Cornelius, who had selected his father to attend the Foreign Mission School. Elias was the fifth of six children. The year the boy was born, his father and other leaders had signed the Treaty of New Echota, ceding the remainder of Cherokee lands in the Southeast in exchange for Removal to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. Boudinot's mother Harriet died in 1836, several months after her seventh child was stillborn. The family moved to Indian Territory prior to the forced removal of 1838.

In 1839, when Boudinot was four years old, his father and other Treaty Party leaders were assassinated by Cherokee opponents for having given up the tribal lands. His uncle Stand Watie survived an attack the same day. For their safety, Boudinot and his siblings were sent back to Connecticut to their mother's family. The Golds ensured the children received good educations. As a youth, Boudinot studied engineering in Manchester, Vermont.