Life under two flags

Front matter

JAMES DEMAREST EATON

Class.

Book..

Foreword

This is a book of reminiscences which are cast in varied areas, quiet and stormy, at home and abroad, and through which runs the evidence of a serene and undisturbed productiveness. Rich and interesting indeed is any life which has known such wide skies and abundant ingathering. Born of a great inheritance which he shared with noble brothers, enriched by the life-long love of a courageous woman, the writer tells with the cheerfulness of youth the story of the strangely diverse experiences through which many years have borne him. In these days when the seas are strewn with wreckage, it is good to hear of ships which are brought home so richly laden.

But the book is more than a volume of reminiscences. Nor is it merely a vindication of the promises past and present. It is the record of lives spent in a particular form of service. It belongs to the literature of the pioneer and it quietly unfolds much that is deepest and most vi FOREWORD

characteristic in us as a people. May I venture briefly to dwell upon this fact.

It has been in the nature of the Saxon to love the frontier. From his first appearance in history he has ever been pushing westward and wherever you find him in the last thousand years he is char-* acteristically interested in the lands beyond. Viewed in this light, the story of the persistent quest which is so delightfully told in the following pages is far more than an interesting personal and family narrative, entertaining as it is from that point of view. I think of it as typical of the spirit which won a hemisphere.

Here, too, are reflected the deeper moods of our English and American pioneering. For I do not find that the mere love of adventure has ever peculiarly satisfied this race. In this aspect the passionate breaking with old horizons for the romantic novelty of the new environment has belonged perhaps more to the Gallic and Castilian natures. The Englishman has sought the unexplored country — that he might there construct a more advantageous society. This has been the joy and song of his pilgrimage. If he has desired to build on no other man's foundation, he has nevertheless always desired to build.

Doubtless this ever-renewed effort to establish a better country in the new land has had its profound influence in turn in shaping the inner texture of the American people. For three hundred years it has been the dominating attitude in which

FOREWORD vii

a large proportion of our people have lived, while the romance of the West has been the lure of every growing youth. The substantial meaning of all this experience in the life of the nation has been made the theme of some of the best of our historical writings, but much remains yet to be understood. Who shall say, for instance, how much of the affirmative attitude in our religious thinking has been bred out of just this constructive aim which has so continuously dominated all our effort as a people?

Of the two frontiers on which Dr. Eaton's life has been spent, each has a unique interest. The accomplishment of social order in the region between the Missouri and the Pacific Ocean is a book of thrilling achievement. How fierce were the high lights! How swiftly have they passed! Extensive as is the literature regarding the period, it is inadequate and one regrets the more that the crowded years compelled so brief a record from one who saw so clearly.

On the other hand, one may confidently assert that the contribution of America to Mexican life and thought has hardly begun. From the gentle but brave and wise service of Dr. and Mrs. Eaton many yet to come shall take heart and strength ere the work is fully accomplished. In time there will dawn a better day for Mexico. The years do not commonly achieve exact justice; but if ever they do in this case, there will some day be in Mexico a Camino Real and its broad and beaten viii FOREWORD

way will follow the footsteps of these bearers of the cross who pushed in faith through the unbroken lands.

Happy have been the days of travel; happier may the sunset be I

James A. Blaisdell

President of Pomona College Claremont, California

Contents

CHAPTBB PAGB

I. Ancestby and Early Years 1

II. Student Life Following the Civil War . . 17

Chapter I

My father, Samuel W, Eaton, was bom in Framingham, Massachusetts, December 25, 1820, — '^a Christmas present to his parents'^ we children used to say. His father was Eben Eaton who was born September 9, 1789, and lived to the age of nearly ninety-four years. He served as deacon of Plymouth Congregational Church for almost half a century, officiating regularly on the Lord's Day to within four weeks of his death. One of his sisters became the wife of the Eeverend Joseph Emerson who was a pioneer in promoting the higher education of women. Another edited **The Friend of Virtue '' a Boston periodical which enlisted the cooperation of many in rescue work for the tempted and fallen.

The father of Eben was Ebenezer Eaton, who fought at Bunker Hill and helped to carry General Warren off the field when the latter fell mortally wounded. His grave is in the old cemetery at

Framingliam, and has been marked by the Sons of the American Eevolution with their iron emblem. The father of Ebenezer was Benjamin Eaton, who served in the French and Indian War, and who with his son enlisted in Captain EdgelPs Company of Minute Men who marched, on the alarm given April 19, 1775, to Concord and Cambridge. All three men passed their lives on a farm which lay partly in Framingham township and partly in Sudbury. They were descended probably from Jonas Eaton and his wife Grace who settled in Eeading, Massachusetts, not later than the year 1640.

My father ^s mother was Sally Chadwick Spofford, born in Eowley, Massachusetts ; a descendant of John Spofford whose name appears on the record of the first division of lands into homestead lots in that town in 1643. In the spring of 1669 he removed to ^^ Spofford 's Hill" in the western part of the township, and was without doubt the first settler in Georgetown, and the progenitor of all of the name in the United States and Canada. The ancestors of John Spofford in Yorkshire, England, can be traced back for centuries ; indeed with a good degree of certainty to the time of William the Conqueror, and to William of Spofforth who had in 1066, the year of the Conquest, among other possessions ^*four acres of meadow and wood-pasture one mile long and one broad, ^' but whose estates were confiscated and apportioned among the Norman adventurers.

My father graduated from Yale College in 1842, counting among Ms most intimate friends in the same class the eminent professor of Greek, James Hadley, and the professor of chemistry, John A. Porter, whose brilliant career as a scientist was cut short by his comparatively early death. In his library was a set of Shakespeare's works in seven large volumes, on the fly leaf of one of which was the autograph ^^J. Day,'' the college president in his time, indicating that the books were given in recognition of the recipient's high standing as a scholar. My brother Edward at the early age of ten years was already becoming acquainted with the writings of the world's greatest dramatist by poring over the pages of that edition, curled up on the floor of the minister's tiny study upstairs.

The young graduate went to Union Theological Seminary for a year, but returned to New Haven to study theology under Dr. Nathanael W. Taylor, and after graduation there went to Andover Seminary for a fourth year. Then he set his face westward, resolved to devote his life to the task of helping to establish Christian institutions in the vast region of the Mississippi valley to which the early settlers were flocking. Chicago, which was then a raw, frontier city of but a few thousand people, was the stopping-place over one Sunday. Thence he journeyed by stage-coach across northern Illinois to Galena, and into Wisconsin Territory to Lancaster, the county seat of Grant

County, where lie took charge of an infant church then worshiping in a log school house.

The following spring he returned to the East to claim Miss Catherine E. Demarest as his beautiful bride, to be for fifty-six years his angel on lifers pathway. She was born on Spring Street in New York when her father, Eeverend James Demarest, M.D. was pastor of a Dutch Eef ormed church. My mother was a descendant of the French Huguenots who soon after the revocation by Louis XIV, in 1685, of the Edict of Nantes, took refuge in foreign countries to the number of at least 500,000, her ancestors escaping to Holland. Hence, while her own family name was French, and she possessed much of the mental alertness and charming vivacity of her Latin lineage, she counted among her relatives many who bore Dutch names. Her mother indeed was a Schoonmaker.

The newly wedded pair voyaged around the great lakes from Buffalo to Milwaukee, and from there traveled by horse-drawn vehicles across the width of Wisconsin Territory, the first stage of the journey being a long, weary drive of two days and the intervening night without a chance to rest. But they passed the three following nights successively in Janesville, Madison and Mineral Point, and at last were welcomed by the people with whom they were to be united in Christian service through forty eventful years.

My birthday occurred on the 18th of March, 1848, the year in which the Territory was admitted to the Union of States. Those were the days when ** prairie schooners ^^ were a common sight to my childish eyes ; when my parents occasionally took me with them to make calls on families living in log cabins a few miles ont of town; when the << Virginia rail fence '^ was ordinarily used to make an enclosure, although the prairies were yet unf enced and in season were covered with beautiful flowers among the grass as with a many-hued carpet; when at times the heavens were almost darkened with enormous flocks of migrating pigeons which as they flew over our heads were killed in large numbers by men and boys with their shotguns; when venison and bear meat could be had for our table ; when in the winter our father would get a hind quarter of beef at a time, cut it up into pieces of suitable size for the table, ^^corn^' some of them in brine and pack others in snow, to be dug out at intervals for feeding his four hungry boys ; when rain water was stored in cisterns, before wells could be driven through the strata of limestone which underlay the land; when soft soap for household use was made by boiling grease in lye from wood ashes, in huge iron kettles over an outdoor fire; and when thrifty housewives manufactured their own candles, so that even after kerosene oil lamps came into use our honored father was wont to announce from the pulpit that the midweek prayer-meeting would be held ^^at early candle-light.^' During three years of my life, 1856 to 1859, on the farm in Framingham, where the old homestead was four miles from ^^The Center,'^ there was no school available ; but I did a little studying under the direction of my aunt Eebecca Eaton, who was a pupil of Mary Lyon at Mount Holyoke, especially beginning Latin. Many years later this was found to facilitate the acquisition of the Spanish language.

The presidential campaign of 1856, and the candidacy of General Fremont as the first Eepublican standard bearer, is recalled through the deep impression made upon my mind by the sight of a long strip of white cotton cloth stretched high above the street from side to side under the elms, and bearing the slogan in huge letters, '^Fremont and Freedom.'^ Another event which stirred my youthful imagination was the ^^ muster'' of seven thousand militiamen at Concord, when Nathanael P. Banks was Governor of the State, and General John E. Wool, who had distinguished himself in the war with Mexico, rode ^^ Green Mountain Morgan'' alongside the chief magistrate of the commonwealth. Although the famous steed had attained the venerable age of thirty-seven years, his spirit was stirred again at the sound of martial music and the sight of the marching men and the prancing horses; and he seemed to renew his youth, capering with the rest, to the admiration of us all. That was only eight or nine years after the United States had taken from Mexico (though salving her conscience by the payment of fifteen million dollars to a helpless neighbor), the vast territory which now comprises Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California, to say nothing of Texas which, some years before through the instigation of American settlers, had been led to declare her independence of the southern republic. It is distinctly remembered that my grandfather, conversing with neighbors in my hearing, condemned that war with Mexico as unjustifiable on our part.

Various were the religious influences which shaped my character in those tender years: in part, the faithful instruction given by our grandmother who fascinated us with her narrations of Bible incidents, so that we children were always begging her to tell us one more story, and who tried without much success to teach us the answers to questions in the ^^ shorter catechism''; in part, the daily family worship conducted by grandfather before he went forth to his engrossing work on the farm, reading the Bible himself and then standing up to pray ; and in part, the attendance at public worship on Sunday morning and afternoon, with the Bible school at noon. After this study there was a refreshing interval for us and for the many other families who had come long distances to church, to eat our lunches out of doors when the weather was not too cold for comfort there. How we did enjoy that religious picnic, since the Puritan custom frowned even upon a quiet walk in the woods or fields on the

Sabbath, and could approve only a journey on foot or by carriage which might be necessary in order to reach the house of God. In the Sunday-school a gentleman once offered a handsomely bound copy of the Bible to every boy and girl who should commit to memory a certain number of hundreds of verses of Scripture within a specified time. This led to the storing of many chapters in my mind, and the forming of a habit which in after years not only helped in the preparation for conducting religious services in my pastorates, but also facilitated the committing to memory of passages from the Spanish Bible as an aid to gospel work in Mexico.

With the return of the family to Wisconsin in the autumn of 1859 I was enrolled a pupil at the Lancaster Institute under the principalship of Sherman Page, who was a strict disciplinarian, a thorough teacher and an effective elocutionist. He was succeeded by Eobert A. Donaldson, graduated at Middlebury College and an accurate scholar who insisted upon our memorizing all the rules and exceptions in Andrews and Stoddard's Latin Grammar. Later he went to San Francisco and became connected with the Southern Pacific Eailroad, occupying for many years a position of large responsibility.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, there was manifested an intense devotion to the Union on the part of the citizens of our town, and many of my older schoolmates enlisted in the army.

One of them, Thomas Cox, was in the opening battle of Bull Run, and the first man from our town to be killed; and the crying of the ^ ^ extra '^ upon the streets made a tremendous impression upon the tender sensibilities of a boy only thirteen years of age. Another who heeded his country's call by a truly religious consecration of himself, ready to die for her, passed with grave countenance through the school-room, from desk to desk, giving a goodbye kiss to each of the older girls; and I looked on the unwonted spectacle with a feeling of awe, akin to that experienced whenever I saw my mother partake with deep feeling of the Lord's Supper.

When the men composing Company C of the Seventh Regiment Wisconsin Volunteers were about to leave for camp, they were drawn up on the green in front of the court-house to receive from the women a banner which bore the legend *'From the Lead Mines of Old Granf My mother had been chosen to make the presentation, supported by a group of ladies, and while she was reading the address that deeply moved all her hearers, the captain, John B. Callis, with sword drawn, was slowly pacing back and forth in front of the ranks, meditating the form of his courteous and patriotic response. He rose to be colonel and brigadier general, and after the war became a member of the Congress at Washington.

The following year came a letter from him stating that the men of the Seventh Wisconsin had chosen my father to be their chaplain and had petitioned the Governor of the State to commission him for that service, and begging him to accept the appointment. The appeal and the commission were laid before the members of the church, who agreed with their pastor in feeling that the call ought to be accepted, and voted to spare him for a few months. He reached the army of the Potomac at the time of the second battle of Bull Eun, and at once gave himself with all his soul to the care of the soldiers ; preaching in camp; making journeys to Washington before battles with the soldiers ' money in cash upon his person or in a hand bag, — as high as $10,000 at a time, — that it might not be lost if they fell; ministering on the battle-j&eld, under the enemy's fire, to the wounded and the dying. For a part of the time he was the only chaplain in the Iron Brigade ; and he could not leave his soldiers until the close of the war in 1865.

After each battle our father wrote to mother in detail concerning the casualties among the men from our township; and it often fell to me to harness the horse to the buggy and drive mother to the home of some soldier, far out in the country perhaps, in order that she might read there the letter which was of such intense interest to the family. The newspapers of Chicago were filled with long lists of the killed, the wounded and the missing, and many errors occurred. Consequently if the name of the loved one had been given, the family waited for accurate tidings from the chaplain before feeling sure as to the truth. Even though the name might not have appeared in any one of the lists, yet the friends would not be able, after a bloody battle, to do more than ^^ rejoice with trembling'' until there should come confirmation of the belief that the dear husband or brother or son was safe. After the three days of fighting at Gettysburg, during which conflict the chaplain wrote home at the close of every day, sometimes utilizing a drumhead for a writingdesk, he reported Colonel Callis wounded, and that only three men of Company C were fit for duty. The ^^Iron Brigade," (composed of the Second, the Sixth and the Seventh Wisconsin Regiments and the Nineteenth Indiana and, for a part of the time, the Twenty-fourth Michigan), had won such renown that it was often placed in very dangerous positions, and it correspondingly suffered.

The chaplain was on the field at Appomattox Court House immediately after the surrender of General Lee, and secured pieces of the apple tree under which the Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia was seated when General Grant met him for the purpose of arranging the terms of capitulation, which were signed in the farmhouse near. These details were given by General Grant himself to the chaplain in Galena, Illinois, at the house of the former's friend, Mr. Felt, where my father had the honor of making a call on the General and Mrs. Grant.

The limits of this narrative will not permit me to follow the fortunes of my brothers, except to record in briefest outline the careers of the three. Edward Dwight graduated at Beloit College and Yale Theological Seminary; held two pastorates in ten years; was president of Beloit for more than thirty years; for a time during the World War represented our denomination at Washington, D. C, and in the same city served a new church as its first pastor; for a long time has been connected with the American Board, first as its vice-president, then on the prudential committee, and going on deputations to foreign fields ; and is still active as a sort of pastor at large. Samuel Lewis graduated at Yale, where he took the first prize at the Junior Exhibition, was elected to a senior society which is the most famous one in that university, was one of the six winners of the Townsend prizes for ^^the best specimen of English composition '^ who spoke in competition for the De Forest gold medal, and was one of the speakers on the commencement program. He entered the medical profession, and for many years has been established in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts, where he has a private sanatorium in addition to his general practice. Charles WoodhuU also became a physician and surgeon spending most of his active life at the capital of Iowa, where he was medical director of the Des Moines Life Insurance Company at the time of his death in 1908. The memorial service in Plymouth Church was noteworthy, for the large attendance of men including the medical fraternity who furnished from their number the honorary pall-bearers, for the beauty and appropriateness of the selections from Scripture and of the music by organ and quartette, and for the able and appreciative analysis of our brother's character and work and the tribute of love and admiration which were given by the pastor and the pastor emeritus respectively. After it was all over, Edward seated himself in Charlie's chair at the office and told us all the beautiful story of that day in a letter from which it may be permitted to quote a few lines: ^^How many whom he has buoyed up in sickness and despondency are dreading the experience of life without him; strong men pay their homage to his greatness, and women and children mourn in him the tenderest, most sympathetic of friends • ... It is an irreparable loss to you all, that you could not share the sorrowful privilege of feeling the depth of affection shown by so many for our brother, and the manifold evidences of the power of his life and influence in this community and far beyond it ... . Are we not proud and thankful that he was given to us and to so many others! and we think he would say to us now with his brightest smile, ^ Say not good night, but in some brighter clime bid me good morning.' "

During the war the Lancaster Institute again experienced a change of administration, the new principal being John J. Copp of Groton, Connecticut, a graduate of Amherst College. He was a most wholesome kind of man of high ideals and an inspiring teacher, and valued the possession of a sound body, keeping his own in good condition by taking walks of from six to ten miles daily. Under his lead our class read the entire twelve books of Virgil's -^neid, presenting each day for ^^the review'' a careful translation of the preceding lesson, which was written in a large blank book, so that in the end each one of us was possessor of a volume that contained an English version of the famous classic. Occasionally the study of the lesson would be halted for a few minutes while our teacher would repeat from memory, and in an elevated and sympathetic tone of voice, some significant lines from Milton's Paradise Lost.

One day in the spring of 1865 he told us that we were prepared to enter Amherst. My own thought had been not to go to college, lest that step might lead to my becoming a minister of the gospel. It seemed to me preferable to avoid the solemn responsibilities and the material sacrifices involved in that calling to which my parents had given themselves with such absolute devotion. I would go into business, perhaps becoming a bookseller or even a publisher ; and if by this means a competence were secured, my parents would have many comforts to lighten the burden of declining years, and generous gifts would be made for the support of the Church, whose divine mission it never occurred to me to question for one moment. This had been my youthful dream. But the next few months were to bring a change in the outlook. After the ^^ Grand Review'^ of the federal armies marching through Washington for three days, (when my father rode his horse among the other officers of his regiment, accompanied by Edward as his orderly, the latter having been for a short time an agent of the United States Christian Commission, probably the youngest in the service), it was not long before the million and a quarter of men were mustered out of service and allowed to return to their families and peaceful occupations. The chaplain delayed his home-coming only a few days to enable him to attend the National Congregational Council at Boston, and accompany the delegates to Plymouth where they adopted the Burial Hill Declaration of Faith. Following closely his return to us came a letter from the colonel of his regiment, who wrote to the chaplain : ^^I should not feel my duty as a soldier ended did I not acknowledge your services while connected with the army. . . . Your example and influence have been to me of untold worth in the discipline of the command. While I feel my inability to express in befitting words the extent of the moral value of your Christian example and service, I am totally lost for language when I refer to your services in the trying hour of battle as you stood among the dead and dying. . . . Heaven, who alone knows the full worth of your labors, reward you.^'

My father in his quiet, thoughtful way led me to realize more fully the advantages of a college education, although at that time he said nothing about entering the Christian ministry. He had given up the comparatively comfortable income of the chaplaincy, and returned to the meager salary of former days, and therefore could not propose my going to his alma mater, nor even to Amherst; but he did offer to help me to the extent of his ability, if I would enter the young college whose founding by wise men from the east, shortly after he himself had joined the ranks of the pioneers, had roused his deepest interest and hearty cooperation. This was evidently a providential opening, and the parental counsel prevailed, backed as it was by family traditions on both sides of the house. Early in September I started for the school which was only two hundred miles distant, ^^ working my passage'' by helping a friend to drive his herd of cattle twenty-five miles to the nearest railroad station, load them on the cars at two o'clock in the morning, and then travel on the freight train headed for the Chicago stockyards, on a pass for ^* drover and assistant.''

Chapter II Student Life Following The Civil War

The halls of Beloit College, which had been almost deserted for four years, because of the enlistment of so many of its students to fight for union and freedom, filled up with men returning to finish their studies in company with those who were too young to serve in the army.

In our freshman class were nine who had worn the blue uniform, including two former captains. One of the seniors was Colonel J. D. Davis who became the famous missionary to Japan. Others from the army were Arthur H. Smith and Henry D. Porter who went to China. A large percentage of every class, in the academy as well as in the college, were expecting to become ministers, and many of these afterward enlisted as Christ ^s soldiers for campaigns in foreign fields. Men of that stamp were so numerous that there was maintained a daily prayer-meeting at noon, each class had its weekly religious meeting after one of the recitations, and there was an evening gathering in the middle of the week designed for the entire student body. The class rooms were filled largely with grown men, not immature boys; and there prevailed a feeling of responsibility to make the most of one's self in those days of opportunities for culture, and to decide in what way one might become most useful to humanity.

The outstanding men of the faculty, besides President Aaron L. Chapin, were Joseph Emerson in Greek, William Porter for Latin, Jackson J. Bushnell in Mathematics, and James J. Blaisdell in Mental and Moral Philosophy. Very few were the tutors; and so the students came into daily personal contact with those rare teachers who molded character while they opened the paths to knowledge. Early in its history Beloit began to furnish professors to Yale, and presidents and instructors for various colleges.