While Harvard's President (1869-1909) Charles W. Eliot won renown in Boston, his first cousin pioneered in St. Louis. The Rev. William Greenleaf Eliot, who had toiled in a post office dead-letter department before becoming a Unitarian minister, founded not only St. Louis' first Unitarian church and Washington University but also an influential family; among his grandsons is T. S. Eliot. Last week, fittingly enough, Washington University (fulltime enrollment: 6,000) named a Boston Eliot as its twelfth chancellor. He is Thomas Hopkinson Eliot, grandson of Charles W. and fifth cousin of Poet T. S.
A hearty, pipe-smoking man of 54, Cambridge-born Tom Eliot...