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Stephen Elliott was born in Beaufort, South Carolina on November 11, 1771. He attended Yale College where he graduated at the top of his class in 1791 before returning to Beaufort to manage plantations he inherited from his parents, William Elliott and Mary Barnwell. In 1796, he married Esther Wylly Habersham, the daughter of Savannah merchant James Habersham. They had thirteen children. He represented St. Helena’s Parish in the state House of Representatives for several terms throughout the 1790s and again from 1808 to 1812 as a state senator. He was instrumental in the passage of the Free School Act of 1811, creating South Carolina’s first public school system, and an act to establish a state bank in 1812. When he was appointed the first president of the Bank of the State of South Carolina, he resigned his seat in the state legislature, sold his plantations in Georgia, and moved to Charleston. He served in this position until his death, expanding the bank across the state with branches in Columbia, Georgetown, and Camden.

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In addition to his accomplishments in the state legislator and banker, Elliott also cultivated a reputation as a respected botanist. He maintained close friendships with Henry Muhlenberg and other leading botanists of the day and assembled an herbarium now preserved at the Charleston Museum. Between 1816 to 1824, he published thirteen articles that eventually became his

Locally, Elliott also maintained an active civic life, serving as president of the Literary and Philosophical Society, a trustee of South Carolina College and College of Charleston, a member of the Charleston Library Society, and helping to found the

, a quarterly literary magazine, in 1828. He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Linnaean Society.

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Although himself not a doctor, Elliott took an interest in the Medical College’s founding. In 1822, he delivered the Medical Society’s first petition to the state legislature to found a college in Charleston. When the charter was finally secured, the Medical Society offered Elliott a chair on the first faculty. He was unanimously elected the professor of Natural History and Botany for the Medical College of South Carolina in 1824. The school awarded him an honorary M.D. in 1825, and he delivered the commencement address at the new Medical College building the following year.

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Elliott died from apoplexy, caused by gout, on March 28, 1830 at the age of fifty-two. There were eleven enslaved persons in his city household at that time, valued at $1,810. He is buried at the Cathedral of St. Luke and St. Paul in Charleston.