Elijah H. Burritt

Elijah Hinsdale Burritt was born on 20 April 1794 in New Britain, Connecticut. He attended Williams College and afterwards taught school and did civil engineering work in Milledgeville, Georgia, including a survey of the Chattahootchie River. He returned to New Britain in 1829 and opened a school with an observatory on the upper story. It was apparently during this period that he wrote Astronomia, Burritt's Universal Multipliers, Geography of the Heavens, and Logarithmic Arithmetic. In 1837, he led a party of settlers to Houston, Texas, and died there of yellow fever on 3 January 1838.