{{short description|American politician}} {{other people|Thomas Eliot}} {{Use mdy dates|date=May 2022}} {{Infobox officeholder | name =Thomas H. Eliot | image =Thomas_H._Eliot_(SSA).png | birth_name = Thomas Hopkinson Eliot | birth_date=June 14, 1907 | death_date={{death date and age|1991|10|14|1907|6|14}} | birth_place =[[Cambridge, Massachusetts]], U.S. | death_place =Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. | resting_place =[[Mount Auburn Cemetery]], Cambridge, Massachusetts | office = Vice Chair of the [[U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations|United States Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations]] | term_start = April 30, 1964<ref name="list">[https://books.google.com/books?id=bSvQAAAAMAAJ&dq=thomas+h.+eliot+4/30/64&pg=PA13 Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, 15-year Report (1974)]</ref> | term_end = April 29, 1966<ref name="list" /> | appointer = [[Lyndon Johnson]] | predecessor = [[Don Hummel]]<ref>[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32437122478932&view=1up&seq=8&skin=2021&q1=Vice%20Chairman Annual report – Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, 4th issue (1963)]</ref> | successor = [[Price Daniel]]<ref>[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112113392184&view=1up&seq=27&skin=2021&q1=Vice%20Chairman Annual report – Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, 9th issue (1968)]</ref> | office1 = Executive Director of the Special Commission on the Structure of the State Government of Massachusetts | term_start1 = 1950<ref name="book3" /> | term_end1 = 1952<ref name="book3" /> | governor1 = [[Paul A. Dever]] | predecessor1 = ''position established''<ref name="book3" /> | successor1 = William A. Waldron<ref name="book3" /> | state2 = [[Massachusetts]] | district2 = {{ushr|MA|9|9th}} | term_start2 = January 3, 1941 | term_end2 = January 3, 1943 | predecessor2 = [[Robert Luce]] | successor2 =[[Charles L. Gifford]] | office3 = General Counsel of the [[Social Security Administration|Social Security Board]] | term_start3 = 1935<ref name="list2">[https://web.archive.org/web/20130607030231/http://www.hhs.gov/ogc/personnel/eliotbio.html OGC Key Personnel Archive – 1935–1937, Former General Counsel Thomas H. Eliot]</ref> | term_end3 = 1937<ref name="list2" /> | predecessor3 = [[Social Security Act|''position established'']] | successor3 = Jack B. Tate<ref name="list2" /> | party =[[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic]] | education = [[Harvard University]] (AB, LLB) | spouse = Lois Jameson | children = 2 }}
'''Thomas Hopkinson Eliot''' (June 14, 1907 – October 14, 1991)<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://hcs.uraf.harvard.edu/former-scholars/1920-45|title=Former Scholars (1920–1945)|access-date=August 31, 2017|language=en}}</ref> was an American lawyer, politician, and academic who served as chancellor of [[Washington University in St. Louis]] and as a congressman in the [[United States House of Representatives]] from [[Massachusetts]].<ref name=bioguide>{{Cite web|url=http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=E000107|title=ELIOT, Thomas Hopkinson – Biographical Information|website=bioguide.congress.gov|access-date=August 31, 2017}}</ref>
==Early life== Eliot was born in [[Cambridge, Massachusetts|Cambridge]], Massachusetts into the prominent [[Eliot family (America)|Eliot family]] to Frances Hopkinson Eliot and [[Samuel A. Eliot (minister)|Samuel A. Eliot II]], a prominent [[Unitarianism|Unitarian]] minister and member of the prominent [[Eliot family (United States)|Eliot family]]. At the time of Thomas' birth, his father was president of the [[American Unitarian Association]] and his grandfather, [[Charles W. Eliot]], had been president of [[Harvard University]] for nearly four decades.
He attended [[Buckingham Browne & Nichols|Browne & Nichols School]] in Cambridge, graduated from [[Harvard University]] in 1928 and was a student at [[Emmanuel College, Cambridge|Emmanuel College]] in [[Cambridge University]], from 1928 to 1929. He graduated from [[Harvard Law School]] in 1932 and was admitted to the bar in 1933, commencing practice in [[Buffalo, New York]].
[[File:Thomas H. Eliot (Massachusetts Congressman).jpg|130px|thumb|right|Eliot as general counsel of the Social Security Board.]] Eliot served as assistant solicitor in the [[United States Department of Labor]] from 1933 to 1935 and as general counsel for the Social Security Board from 1935 to 1937. He was a lecturer on government at [[Harvard University]] from 1937 to 1938, and regional director of the Wage and Hour Division in the Department of Labor from 1939 to 1940.<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/biographies/thomas-h-eliot/|title=Eliot, Thomas H. (1907–1991)|date=July 30, 2012|work=Harvard Square Library|access-date=August 31, 2017|language=en-US}}</ref>
== Career == [[File:Congressman Tom Eliot of Massachusetts chatting with a delegate from his state8d23158v.jpg|thumb|left|Congressman Tom Eliot of Massachusetts chatting with a delegate from his state.]] In 1938 Eliot, a [[Democratic Party of the United States|Democrat]], ran for election to the Seventy-sixth Congress, losing to [[Republican Party of the United States|Republican]] [[Robert Luce]]. Eliot defeated Luce in a rematch in 1940, winning election to the Seventy-seventh Congress (January 3, 1941 – January 3, 1943). He was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1942 to the Seventy-eighth Congress and for nomination in 1944 to the Seventy-ninth Congress; both times his successful opponent was the colorful longtime Boston politician [[James M. Curley]].
Eliot saw war service in 1943 as director of the British Division, Office of War Information, London, England, and special assistant to the United States Ambassador. From 1943 to 1944 he was chairman of the appeals committee of the [[National War Labor Board (1942–1945)|National War Labor Board]]. He served with the [[Office of Strategic Services]] in 1944, and from November 1944 to November 1945 was chief counsel of the Division of Power, U.S. Department of the Interior. In addition, Eliot served as [[New England]] chairman of the [[United Negro College Fund]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/collections/franklin/index.php?p=collections/findingaid&id=113&q=&rootcontentid=10978|title=Thomas H. Eliot Papers, 1941–1942 {{!}} Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum|website=www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu|language=en|access-date=August 31, 2017}}</ref>
After the war, Eliot engaged in the practice of law in [[Boston]] from 1945 to 1950, before returning to university life. From 1950 to 1952 he served as the executive director of the Massachusetts Special Commission on the Structure of the State Government.<ref name="book3">{{cite book |last1=Massachusetts |first1=Commonwealth of |title=Reports of the Massachusetts Special Commission on the Structure of the State Government, Issue 1–15 |date=1950–1954 |publisher=Wright & Potter Printing Company |location=Boston, Massachusetts |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015067279201&view=1up&seq=15&skin=2021}}</ref> In 1952 he was appointed professor of political science at [[Washington University in St. Louis]], where he wrote ''Governing America; the Politics of a Free People: National, State, and Local Government'', and ''American Government: Problems and Readings in Political Analysis''. He was a professor of constitutional law from 1958 to 1961. In 1961 he moved to the Washington University College of Liberal Arts, serving as dean from 1961 to 1962, and chancellor from 1962 to 1971. He also served as vice chairman of the United States [[Commission on Intergovernmental Relations]] from 1964 to 1966 and as president of the [[Salzburg Global Seminar]] from 1971 to 1977; and as a teacher at [[Buckingham Browne & Nichols|Buckingham, Browne & Nichols School]] in Cambridge, Massachusetts (his high school alma mater, which had merged with another school), from 1977 to 1985.
== Personal life and death == He married Lois Jameson and they had two children.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Blau |first1=Elaine |title=Thomas H. Eliot, Ex-Congressman And University Chief, Dies at 84 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/16/us/thomas-h-eliot-ex-congressman-and-university-chief-dies-at-84.html |access-date=April 9, 2022 |work=The New York Times |date=October 16, 1991}}</ref> Eliot was a resident of Cambridge until his death there in 1991.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://wustl.edu/about/history-traditions/chancellors/thomas-eliot/|title=Thomas H. Eliot {{!}} Washington University in St. Louis|work=Washington University in St. Louis|access-date=August 31, 2017|language=en-US}}</ref> He was interred at [[Mount Auburn Cemetery]] in [[Cambridge, Massachusetts|Cambridge]], Massachusetts.<ref name=bioguide/>
==Bibliography== * Eliot, Thomas H. ''Recollections of the New Deal: When the People Mattered.'' Edited with an introduction by [[John Kenneth Galbraith]]. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992; * Eliot, Thomas H. ''Public and Personal.'' Edited by Frank O'Brien. St. Louis: Washington University Press, 1971.
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== {{CongBio|E000107}} *[https://web.archive.org/web/20060829044914/http://chancellorsroom.wustl.edu/theliot.htm Biographical entry] at Washington University in St. Louis *[http://www.ssa.gov/history/teliot.html Biographical entry] at the [[Social Security Administration]] *[http://www.salzburgglobal.org Salzburg Global Seminar]
{{s-start}} {{s-par|us-hs}} {{US House succession box | state=Massachusetts | district=9 | before=[[Robert Luce]] | after= [[Charles L. Gifford]] | years=January 3, 1941 – January 3, 1943 }} {{s-end}}
{{USRepMA}} {{Washington University in Saint Louis chancellors}} {{WUSTL |state=expanded}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eliot, Thomas H.}} [[Category:1907 births]] [[Category:1991 deaths]] [[Category:American Unitarians]] [[Category:Eliot family (United States)|Thomas H.]] [[Category:Harvard Law School alumni]] [[Category:Chancellors of Washington University in St. Louis]] [[Category:Washington University in St. Louis faculty]] [[Category:Burials at Mount Auburn Cemetery]] [[Category:Democratic Party United States representatives from Massachusetts]] [[Category:Buckingham Browne & Nichols School alumni]] [[Category:Lyndon B. Johnson administration personnel]] [[Category:20th-century American lawyers]] [[Category:Lawyers from Buffalo, New York]] [[Category:Lawyers from St. Louis]] [[Category:Lawyers from Boston]] [[Category:Franklin D. Roosevelt administration personnel]] [[Category:Truman administration personnel]] [[Category:Alumni of the University of Cambridge]] [[Category:Harvard College alumni]] [[Category:20th-century United States representatives]] [[Category:Delta Upsilon members]]