Eelco Alta (Makkum, Súdwest-Fryslân, 23 June 1723 - Bozum, 17 August 1798) was a Frisian clergyman, theologian, and veterinarian. Eelco Alta was born in 1723 in the coastal village of Makkum, and studied theology at the University of Franeker from 1737 until 1745, when he started as a minister in the nearby villages of Beers and Jellum. After nine years he moved to the main protestant church of Boazum, where he was to spend the next fifty years. He was politically active in the last years of the Dutch Republic, siding (although not explicitly) with the forces of republican "Patriotism", partly for religious reasons. During the royalist backlash of the late 1780s, this caused him some problems: some of his sons were actively persecuted, while he was forced to leave Bozum between 1790 and th