Colonel Henry Steel Olcott the co-founder of the Theosophical Society was born at Orange, New Jersey, USA on the 2nd of August, 1832. He was the eldest child of Henry Wyekoff Olcott and his wife Emily. The seventh generation of the family line, after his ancestor Thomas Olcott crossed over to the new world, some 10 years after the Pilgrim Fathers in the May flower. The parents were typical new world Puritans -- religious, God-fearing devout. The mother had a reputation for great piety in the family circles, and Henry Steel writes lovingly of his “noble and revered parents.” Not many details are known of the boy’s home life and childhood. At some time the family moved from Orange to New York City and Henry attended one of the public schools there, he must have done very well at the school for, at the age of fifteen, he entered New York University. However, after a year there his formal education was brought to an abrupt end.

Some misfortune struck Henry senior’s business interests, and funds were not available for Henry junior to continue at college. So at the age of sixteen, his education incomplete, untrained for any profession, and with no opening for him in his father’s business, young Henry had to get out and carve some career for himself.

He moved to Ohio, near Elyria, share-farming a 50-acre plot. Why he jumped from a university in New York and a commercial family background to such an occupation is hard to say. But he seems by disposition to have needed at times to make a clean break with the old and launch out on the completely new. He enjoyed a challenge. The pioneer blood ran strongly in his veins.

At about this time -- to be precise, in the year 1848 when Henry left home -- modern spiritualism made its debut before the world. It began in a humble way at Rochester, N.Y., in the home of John Fox.

Henry, was introduced to spiritualism by his mother’s brothers, Edgar, Isaac, and George Steel. These men with their families were apparently landowners and farmers in Ohio within easy reach of Henry’s 50-acre plot. Writing in his 'Old Diary Leaves' toward the end of his life, Col. Olcott mentions having contacted these Steel brothers again at a later period in California, where they had moved and become owners of large ranches. He says, “I may almost regard them as my greatest benefactors in this incarnation, since it was from them, and the other bright minds and noble souls connected with them in a spiritualistic group, that I first learned to think and aspire along the lines which led me ultimately to H.P.B. and the Theosophical movement.”

These realistic years close to nature, the smell of the soil in his nostrils, the handle of the plough or pitchfork in his hands, were perhaps better for character formation than college education. But the obscure life of an Ohio farmer was not to be his destiny. His brain was too active, his ambitions too strong for that. After four or five years of country life, he returned East to study agricultural chemistry and other aspects of scientific farming.

After about two years of training in scientific agriculture, a stroke of luck took Henry another step onward toward his destiny. A relative left him a legacy. This was sufficient for him to join forces with a fellow student of Newark and start his own school of agricultural science. Situated near Mount Vernon, New York it was called the Westchester Farm School. It was based on Swiss models, and was one of the pioneers of scientific agricultural education in America . From here the American public began to hear the name of Col. Henry Steel Olcott for the first time.

On the 14th of October 1874, Col. Olcott met Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, for the first time, little realizing that the meeting was to become a very potent factor in his life. In fact it changed the entire course of his life.

Colonel Olcott was growing more and more unhappy about the spiritualistic movement with which he had been connected for over twenty years, writing, speaking and organizing.

Surely the way out of it was not back into the desert of materialism, but rather onward and upward to the heights of the new-yet ancient-teachings of the Great Adept Brotherhood.

On the 7th of September 1875 Colonel Olcott and Madam Blavatsky were at a lecture, the subject of which aroused a great deal of enthusiasm and animated discussion. The Colonel had the idea that those present might launch a society for the study of occult subjects. He wrote the idea on a slip of paper and handed it to Madam Blavatsky, who nodded her head in agreement. Whereupon, Colonel Olcott rose and after briefly sketching the present condition of the spiritualistic movement, proposed “to form a nucleus around which might gather all the enlightened and brave souls who were willing to work together for the collection and diffusion of knowledge.”

Thus on 17th November 1875 the Theosophical Society was formed. On that date the Society held its first regular meeting, and President-Founder Col. Olcott delivered the inaugural address.

In May 1883 Colonel Olcott and Madam Blavatsky moved to India and had their first view of the home-to-be in India. It was a beautiful estate on the outskirts of Madras at Adyar. After settling there the Colonel wrote “Happy days are in store for us here”.

The Colonel began the year 1884 with a quick trip to Ceylon. There he persuaded the persecuted Buddhists to form a Buddhist Defence Committee, and agreed to act as the committee’s special envoy to the appropriate governmental authorities in England. Through the force of his great energy, enthusiasm and organizing abilities he brought about a revival of the Buddhist faith. For his work he was honoured in 1967 in Sri Lanka by the Prime-minister speaking from the platform of the Olcott memorial Society. He said:
 

At the close he bade all the delegates farewell. The newspapers described the scene thus “The delegates filed pass the venerable old man -- Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, Parsis – some shaking hands, some bowing at his feet, some salaaming, according to their various customs, all united in one sentiment of love and reverence.”

On the 17th February 1907 Colonel Henry Steel Olcott passed away in Adyar. At his funeral the new President elected made an appropriate and touching funeral oration during which she read the Colonel’s last message, signed by his own hand, on February 2. These were his words: