
Joe Edwards (left), owner of Blueberry Hill and The Pageant and proprietor of the St. Louis Walk of Fame, presents Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton with a replica of William Greenleaf Eliot’s star in a ceremony May 11 in the University City Loop. Eliot — a co-founder of Washington University — was one of five Walk of Fame inductees this year. The grandfather of poet T.S. Eliot, W.G. Eliot came to St. Louis as a missionary in 1834 and was the first Unitarian minister west of the Mississippi River. In 1853, co-founder Wayman Crow secured a charter for a proposed college named Eliot Seminary. In 1854 — the year that the name of the school changed to Washington Institute of St. Louis — Eliot became chairman of the Board of Trustees, and in 1870 he became chancellor. He held both positions until his death in 1887.