EATON, DORMAN BRIDGMAN (1823-1899), American lawyer, was born at Hardwick, Vermont, on the 27th of June 1823. He graduated at the university of Vermont in 1848 and at the Harvard Law School in 1850, and in the latter year was admitted to the bar in New York city. There he became associated in practice with William Kent, the son of the great chancellor, an edition of whose Commentaries he assisted in editing. Eaton early became interested in municipal and civil service reform. He was conspicuous in the fight against Tweed and his followers, by one of whom he was assaulted; he required a long period of rest, and went to Europe, where he studied the workings of the civil service in various countries. From 1873 to 1875 he was a member of the first United States Civil Service Commission. In 1877, at the request of President Hayes, he made a careful study of the British civil service, and three years later published Civil Service in Great Britain. He drafted the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883, and later became a member of the new commission established by it. He resigned in 1885, but was almost immediately reappointed by President Cleveland, and served until 1886, editing the 3rd and 4th Reports of the commission. He was an organizer (1878) of the first society for the furtherance of civil service reform in New York, of the National Civil Service Reform Association, and of the National Conference of the Unitarian Church (1865). He died in New York city on the 23rd of December 1899, leaving $100,000 each to Harvard and Columbia universities for the establishments of professorships in government. He was a legal writer and editor, and a frequent contributor to the leading reviews. In addition to the works mentioned he published Should Judges be Elected? (1873), The Independent Movement in New York (1880), Term and Tenure of Office (1882), The Spoils System and Civil Service Reform (1882), Problems of Police Legislation (1895) and The Government of Municipalities (1899).
See the privately printed memorial volume, Dorman B. Eaton, 1823-1899 (New York, 1900).
EATON, MARGARET O’NEILL (1796-1879), better known as Peggy O’Neill, was the daughter of the keeper of a popular Washington tavern, and was noted for her beauty, wit and vivacity. About 1823, she married a purser in the United States navy, John B. Timberlake, who committed suicide while on service in the Mediterranean in 1828. In the following year she married John Henry Eaton (1790-1856), a Tennessee politician, at the time a member of the United States Senate. Senator Eaton was a close personal friend of President Jackson, who in 1829 appointed him secretary of war. This sudden elevation of Mrs Eaton into the cabinet social circle was resented by the wives of several of Jackson’s secretaries, and charges were made against her of improper conduct with Eaton previous to her marriage to him. The refusal of the wives of the cabinet members to recognize the wife of his friend angered President Jackson, and he tried in vain to coerce them. Eventually, and partly for this reason, he almost completely reorganized his cabinet. The effect of the incident on the political fortunes of the vice-president, John C. Calhoun, whose wife was one of the recalcitrants, was perhaps most important. Partly on this account, Jackson’s favour was transferred from Calhoun to Martin Van Buren, the secretary of state, who had taken Jackson’s side in the quarrel and had shown marked attention to Mrs Eaton, and whose subsequent elevation to the vice-presidency and presidency through Jackson’s favour is no doubt partly attributable to this incident. In 1836 Mrs Eaton accompanied her husband to Spain, where he was United States minister in 1836-1840. After the death of her husband she married a young Italian dancing-master, Antonio Buchignani, but soon obtained a divorce from him. She died in Washington on the 8th of November 1879.
See James Parton’s Life of Andrew Jackson (New York, 1860).
EATON, THEOPHILUS (c. 1590-1658), English colonial governor in America, was born at Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire, about 1590. He was educated in Coventry, became a successful merchant, travelled widely throughout Europe, and for several years was the financial agent of Charles I. in Denmark. He subsequently settled in London, where he joined the Puritan congregation of the Rev. John Davenport, whom he had known since boyhood. The pressure upon the Puritans increasing, Eaton, who had been one of the original patentees of the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1629, determined to use his influence and fortune to establish an independent colony of which his pastor should be the head. In 1637 he emigrated with Davenport to Massachusetts, and in the following year (March 1638) he and Davenport founded New Haven. In October 1639 a form of government was adopted, based on the Mosaic Law, and Eaton was elected governor, a post which he continued to hold by annual re-election, first over New Haven alone, and after 1643 over the New Haven Colony or Jurisdiction, until his death at New Haven on the 7th of January 1658. His administration was embarrassed by constantly recurring disputes with the neighbouring Dutch settlements, especially after Stamford (Conn.) and Southold (Long Island) had entered the New Haven Jurisdiction, but his prudence and diplomacy prevented an actual outbreak of hostilities. He was prominent in the affairs of the New England Confederation, of which he was one of the founders (1643). In 1655 he and Davenport drew up the code of laws, popularly known as the “Connecticut Blue Laws,” which were published in London in 1656 under the title New Haven’s Settling in New England and some Lawes for Government published for the Use of that Colony.
A sketch of his life appears in Cotton Mather’s Magnalia (London, 1702); see also J.B. Moore’s “Memoir of Theophilus Eaton” in the Collections of the New York Historical Society, second series, vol. ii. (New York, 1849).