Eliab W. Metcalf was born in Royalston, Massachusetts on April 18, 1827. His father died when he was three years old. He lived in Maine until 1865 and for twenty years was a merchant and ship owner in Bangor, Maine. In 1853, he married E. Maria Ely of East Hampton, Mass., lady principal of Williston Seminary. They had five children who all attended Oberlin College: Irving W. (A.B. 1878), Wilmot V. (A.B. 1883), Maynard M. (A.B. 1889), Lucy H. (Mrs. Augustus G. Upton, enrolled 1873-76), and Edith Ely (enrolled 1874-76).
Metcalf volunteered for the Civil War, but was rejected because of a foot injury. He went to the front five times at his own expense during the war, serving in hospitals and on the battlefield with the Christian Commission. In 1865 he and his wife moved to Elyria, Ohio. Metcalf dealt in timberlands in the Midwest, personally examining and surveying the land before buying. He became an expert woodsman and enjoyed the outdoors.
After losing a ship burned by an English-built privateer, Metcalf spent twelve years in Washington advocating his theory that the forty-nine marine insurance companies, who claimed many millions of the Geneva Award, were entitled to nothing unless they could show actual loss above the war premiums received. Congress adopted his theory and Metcalf, as well as other owners, officers, and seamen of similar merchant ships, recovered full indemnity. Congress established the Court of Alabama Claims, and Metcalf continued to help others collect claims through this Court. Metcalf also won a test suit in the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, in Metcalf v. City of Watertown, Wisconsin, confirming his own title and the title of a large number of immigrants and others to the farms on which they had settled.
He and his wife attended the First Congregational Church in Elyria, where they taught Sunday school for several years. He was interested in the Y.M.C.A. and was active in temperance legislation. Metcalf served as a trustee of Oberlin College for nearly twenty years (1880-1899).
Eliab W. Metcalf died of angina pectoris on November 24, 1899.
Sources Consulted
The trustee file of Eliab W. Metcalf in the Oberlin College Archives (RG 28/1).
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