Reverend Elias Cornelius

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Reverend Elias Cornelius was born July 30, 1794 in Somers, Weschester County, New York. At the age of sixteen, he began his college career at Yale. After his undergraduate years, he continued to study theology at the Yale Divinity School and was licensed to preach by June 1816 by the South Association of Congregational ministers. He traveled to many cities and towns in the northeastern states including Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maryland, preaching sermons and raising money. The majority of the money raised was to support the conversion of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek Indian tribes to Christianity. It was also to be used to establish schools within these nations. He continued to preach and fundraise as he traveled south where he finally ended in Northwest Georgia, near Cartersville in 1817. He spent 18 months there and it was at this location that he encountered the Cherokee tribe who led him to the Etowah Indian Mounds. He wrote in his journal about his visit and the journal became the first published account of a white person visiting the mounds. His detailed journal excerpt of that encounter was publish in his memoir, Memoir of the Reverend Elias Cornelius. Neither Cornelius or the group of Cherokee who led him to the site knew the relevance or purpose of the mounds at that time. It was later discovered that the mounds were used as burial sites as well as residential areas and temples.