Abigail Adams Eliot 1892, the youngest child of Reverend Christopher Rhodes Eliot and Mary Jackson (May) Eliot. The Eliots were a prominent Boston Brahmin family. Abby's father was a Unitarian minister and her grandfather, William G. Eliot, was the first chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis. Her sister, Martha May Eliot, became a nationally known public health specialist, and her brother, Frederick May Eliot, headed the Unitarian Association of America for many years. The poet, playwright, critic, and Nobel laureate T.S. Eliot was her first cousin. After serving at the First Parish Church of Dorchester on Meeting House Hill for 13 years,
T. S. Eliot religious sensibility." After this, he worked on more "commercial" plays for more general audiences: "The Family Reunion" (1939), "The Cocktail Party" (1949), "The Confidential Clerk", (1953) and "The Elder Statesman" (1958) (the latter three were produced by Henry Sherek and directed by E. Martin Browne). The Broadway production in New York of "The Cocktail Party" received the 1950 Tony Award for Best Play. Eliot wrote "The Cocktail Party" while he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study. Regarding his method of playwriting, Eliot explained, "If I set out to write a play, I start by an act