Burritt, Elihu (1810-1879)

US blacksmith and philanthropist. He embarked upon a lecture tour to various places in the USA and Europe on behalf of peace. In 1844 he founded a newspaper in Worcester, Massachusetts, the Christian Citizen, to propagate his views on Christian pacifism. In 1846, while in England, he instituted the League of Universal Brotherhood. He organized the Brussels Peace Conference of 1848 in Belgium, and similar conclaves held at Paris, France, and Frankfurt am Main, Germany, among other cities. He published innumerable pamphlets.

Burritt was born in New Britain, Connecticut. A self-educated teenager, he became apprenticed to a blacksmith at the age of 16, and adopted that work as his trade. In his spare moments at the forge he was able to indulge a passion for literature, and for a short time attended a school kept by his brother, Elijah. In this way he learned Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, and German, and by the time he was 30 could read nearly 50 languages.