A memoir of the Rev. S. J. M. Eaton, D. D., pastor for a third of a century of the Presbyterian church of Franklin, Pennsylvania

Preface

When a man who has touched in many and important points, and largely influenced in many ways, the community to which he belonged, is removed from his pl&ce by the hand of death, it seems fitting that the facts and elements that served to mould his life and character should be gathered together, both as a memorial to the man himself, and as a record of value for the training and education of those who shall come after him. The more pure and noble the character of such a man, and the more prominent and beneficent his influence, the more valuable will be the record of his life.

The centre of Dr. S. J. M. Eaton's influence was Franklin, Pennsylvania ; but it was felt to a greater or less extent throughout Western Pennsylvania, and more particularly in the region included in the Presbytery of Erie ; but it radiated with diminished power into all parts of the State, and was felt in the movements and work of the church at large.

His life and character as a minister of the Gospel and what he accomplished for the good of the world and the advancement of Christ's Kingdom, are conceived to be worthy of study. With this view the following sketch, concluding with the record of the Funeral and Memorial Services at his home in Franklin, and the Memorial observances in the Chautauqua

IV.

Assembly and at the meeting of the Presbytery of Erie at Cambridgeboro, has been prepared, and is laid, with much diffidence on the part of the writer, before the friends and admirers of the modest, earnest, God-fearing man who is its subject.

By the use made of his letters and journals (extracts from which are usually distinguished by marginal quotation marks), Dr. Eaton is allowed to tell, so far as practicable, his own story. The reminiscences and thoughts of his intimate friends have also been laid under contribution, and all available means used to present this beloved and greatly lamented man, both as citizen, writer, and preacher of the Gospel, in a just and clear light before the minds of his friends and contemporaries.

Thanks are tendered to all who assisted in this labor of love by their contributions to the record of his life and labors, or by their addresses on the occasion of the memorial services that followed his lamented death; as well as to the many friends who, in the hour of affliction, did what they could, by their letters of sympathy, to alleviate the sorrow of her who for nearly forty years had been his chief earthly stay and helper, and who remains the chief mourner beside his empty chair.

A. H. C.

Contents

I. MEMOIR.

CHAPTER

I. EARLY TIMES. 1

Chapter I. Early Times

The name given to a child sometimes marks an epoch. The number of "Andrew Jacksons," with which the baptismal registers of the churches in the United States were sprinkled between the years 1828 and 1836, would fill a considerable volume. Few families in this country, in the early part of the present century, were without a George Washington among their sons; and even yet "G. W." and "A. J." are the most common initials found in city directories and on tax lists. Calvin and Luther and Wesley are still made sponsors, at least to the extent of giving their names, to the sons respectively of many a Presbyterian or Lutheran or Methodist parent.

When a fifth son was born, on the 15th of April, 1820, to the Rev. Johnston Eaton, it was but a year or two after the death of the Rev. Samuel John Mills, the earnest and devoted leader of the band of ardent young men who were instrumental in starting that wonderful awakening in the cause of missions to the heathen, which resulted in the organization of the "American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions." Graduated from Yale College in 1809, and licensed in 1812, after a course of theological study at

S. J. M. Eaton, D. D.

Andover, to preach the Gospel, he went, under the patronage of the Congregational Churches of Connecticut and Massachusetts, on a Missionary tour through the Southern States. He was ordained in 1815, and after two or three years spent among the churches in his own country in organizing Societies, and stirring them to greater zeal and activity in the work of Foreign Missions, he was sent to Africa to select a site for a colony of manumitted Slaves — this being deemed at that time a feasible scheme for securing the Christianizing of the millions of heathen in that great dark continent.

He and his fellow Missionary, Rev. Ebenezer Burgess, sailed for Africa by way of England in November, 1817; and after spending two months on the African coast, and having accomplished the purpose of their visit, they sailed on their return voyage in May, 1818. But Mr. Mills sickened and died before reaching home and was buried at sea. His 1 youth, his zeal and energy, and his consecration to a great work, coupled with his untimely death, made a deep impression on all who had become interested in the cause of Foreign Missions and African Colonization in this country; and the Rev. Johnston Eaton and his pious and devoted wife Elizabeth signalized their admiration of the character and work of the young martyr by naming the first son born to them after his death, Samuel John Mills. His subsequent career showed that the honor was not misplaced.

He was born, as already stated, in the year 1820 — a very early date in the history of Presbyterianism in

Early Times. J

North Western Pennsylvania. His father had settled but thirteen years before near the mouth of Walnut Creek, on the Pennsylvania Shore of Lake Erie, and began to preach the Gospel, being the first permanently settled minister in the region of the Lake ; and but twelve years before, his mother, Elizabeth Canon — a niece of that John Canon who founded and gave name to Canonsburg, Pennsylvania — as the bride of the young minister, made her way on horseback from Laurel Hill, Fayette county, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, to the log cabin home her husband had prepared for her. The second war with Great Britain had come to an end but five years before, and was still the exhaustless theme of talk around every fireside, and wherever men and boys were gathered together. For nearly all men and large boys, living within from thirty to fifty miles of Presque Isle Bay (the present harbor of Erie), and able to bear arms, had been called to do service in the garrison at Erie, or to assist in the construction of Perry's fleet at that point; or they had enlisted under the brave Commander and borne their part in the famous victory which he achieved over the British fleet at the Western end of the Lake. This war talk, and the recounting of brave exploits and " hair-breadth 'scapes by flood and field," in due time began to die away; but the children, as they advanced to years of thought, would demand to have the old stories repeated, and so the traditions of the war would be perpetuated.

The whole region of country along the Lake, and for a hundred miles or more South, was in great part still

S. J. M. Eaton, D. D.

a wilderness of forest trees, but little changed from what it was when the newly licensed young minister, riding solitarily along a bridle-path, came first in sight of the great blue Lake rising majestically against the sky, and sweeping the whole horizon on the North.

The town of Erie was a village of but a few hundred people. Waterford, fifteen miles South, was a mere cluster of houses on the site of the old French Fort, Le BoeufF, And here and there in what is now the county of Erie were clumps of houses that have since developed into the flourishing towns of North East, Girard, Union City, Springfield, Wattsburg, &c. Farms were but clearings of limited space. The roads were but winding wagon tracks through the woods and over the hills and across shallow places in the streams — for bridges were very rare.

Churches were few and far between. There was one at Springfield, another at Waterford, another at North East, one in Erie^ and one at Fairview, or the Mouth of Walnut Creek — for the village of Fairview had not then been thought of.

When Samuel John Mills Eaton made his appearance in his father's house, his coming increased the family group to eight, the parents included. There was first Daniel, the eldest, then John, then William, then Martha, Johnston, and finally Mills, — the name by which he was uniformly called by his brothers and sisters, his cousins, school-mates and nearest friends. Isaac and Elizabeth were added to the family in subsequent years.

Early Times. 5

At the time of Mills's birth his father was preaching alternately in the " Yellow Meeting-House" in Erie, and in the log church, his home church, on the bank of the Lake, ten miles further west. When the pastor was at home the whole family, babies included, went to church. This was in part a measure of necessity; for in those early times there was no "girl" with whom to leave them in charge; so the mother must either remain at home, or take the entire brood with her.

What this u log church" was like where Mills Eaton, first as babe, then as small boy and larger boy, went to church, is thus described by Dr. Eaton himself, in an address delivered on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the organization of Fairview Church: "The meeting-house," he says, " was not at " first provided with regular seats, but was furnished " with temporary benches, made by placing boards or " slabs on billets of wood. This was until such time "as the people felt able to have regular pews made. " In process of time this was done. Pews were ar- " ranged and made in regular order, the workmanship "of the wonderful singer* — one of their number who " was the good genius of the neighborhood, and the " leader in all the improvements of the country.

" The pulpit was in the end of the building, about "three feet above the floor, entirely boxed in, and " about five by eight feet in size. On either side of " the pulpit was a row of seats extending back to the

Mohri Pherrin.

6\ J. M. Eaton, D. D

" walls, while in front the seats were arranged in two " rows reaching to the rear wall. They were arranged " in this wise : First, on the left of the pulpit, was " the pew of the pastor's family. At the head of this " sat good old John Pherrin, 'the dark,' as they call- " ed him, ready to rise in his seat, as the reading of "the hymn was concluded, and say, 'sing Fiducia? " Next to him on the same seat was the minister's old- " est son, then the next to him in point of age, then "the minister's wife; whilst the youngest child (unless 11 a babe in arms) found accommodations on the steps 11 of the pulpit." And here we may imagine the little Mills sitting when two or three years old — taking his first step as it were towards the pulpit to which he was afterwards to ascend, and which, in the generic sense of the word, he was to adorn for so many years. These were very primitive times. The whole country was still wild and rude. Nature had as yet been only scratched here and there by the hand of improvement. Houses were but cabins in the wilderness, and home comforts and conveniences were few; and the people planned for no more comfort or convenience in the Meeting-House than in the cabin. "At the first," to quote again from Dr. Eaton's discourse, "there was no arrangement for heating the meeting- " house. For a time, up at least to 1815, there was a " brick hearth laid in the middle of the house, and " charcoal from the blacksmith's shop was placed " upon it and kindled. This made a generous heat, "and modified somewhat the cold of winter; but as " there was neither chimney nor flue, the carbonic acid

Early Times. 7

" gas was not at all favorable to intelligent hearing, or u even preaching, and occasionally a lady would apu proach so near as to inhale the gas and sink down to " the floor unconscious, until carried out into the open " air.

"After this a large 'ten-plate' stove, that had been " brought from east of the mountains with infinite " trouble by one of the settlers, was procured and set "up, to the joy and comfort of the worshippers. To "accommodate this stove a chimney was made from " the attic up through the roof."

To this "log meeting-house" the young Mills Eaton trudged, after he was old enough to walk, through most of the years of his boyhood, along the winding woodland road, every Sabbath — unless his father were absent holding service and preaching in one of his more distant charges. In the winter season, however, services in the old church were often suspended. The distance many of the parishioners had to travel, over almost impassable roads, unless snow was on the ground, made the effort too severe even for their faith and resolution to endure, — especially when the house, in which they were to worship, at the end of their tedious journey, was scarcely more comfortable than the open forest — " God's first temple" — through which they had passed.

But the old church at length grew too old and too uncomfortable and — although it had been enlarged — was tQO small for the satisfactory accommodation of the large and constantly increasing congregation. So in 1833, a quarter of a century after it was first dedicated to the worship of God, it was abandoned; and a new and much more commodious building, erected near what is now Swan's Station on the Railroads, was occupied; and thither "Father Eaton," as he was affectionately called for many years, diligently went, with his wife and eight children — at least as many of them as were still at home — every Sunday, and preached the Gospel of the Kingdom for twelve years more.

Continual fruits had attended his ministry from the first. During the twenty-one years from 1810 to 1831, over one hundred persons were added to the church, nearly all on profession of their faith in Christ.

It fell to the lot of the writer and compiler of this Memoir to bear a part in the celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the founding of Fairview Church, and to present a paper on that occasion on "The First Pastor, Early Elders, and Members of the Church." A few extracts from that address, giving some of the characteristics of the father of Dr, Eaton, and some account of his labors as a minister, with an incidental sketch of his old home, may be appropriately given here:

" ' Father Eaton ' was not the man to shirk duty in his sacred calling, or to spare labor and personal exposure in the service of his people. Many a ride through mud and storm he took on his good horse 'Jolly/ or in his heavy-topped carriage after the same slow but patient beast, urging him pleasantly with his 'c'up Jolly, c'up Jolly/ to visit a sick or infirm parishioner, or to reach one of his distant preaching

Early Times. g

points. One who had deliberately given himself when a young man to the work of the Gospel Ministry on the frontier, was not likely to become indolent, or to yield to ease and self-indulgence when he grew older.

"As I remember ' Father Eaton/ he was a small man, slight in form, and of a very serious cast of countenance. He was always close-shaved, with thin brown hair streaked with gray, and mild blue eyes. His voice had a peculiar tone — not clear and full, but rather rasping and thin. As a speaker he was unimpassioned, but spoke right on in a monotonous and uniform tone. He attempted no flights of oratory and used no gesticulation. He never read his sermons, but spoke from brief notes, holding a small Bible or Testament in his left hand, and looking straight forward. His spectacles generally rested at the top of his wrinkled forehead, except when he would occasionally adjust them to read a passage of Scripture or glance at his notes.

"Mr. Eaton's sermons were what would now be called strongly doctrinal. But the great theme of his preaching, as it was his main comfort in life and his only hope in the hour of death, was salvation through Christ alone But he did not rest merely in sound doctrine. He illustrated his faith by his works, and proved himself a child of God by his holy living. He fearlessly rebuked sin, and preached God's law as the rule of life. While he told men, therefore, that it was only by God's mercy and through the infinite merits of Christ that they could be saved, io S. J. M. Eaton, D. D.

he made it plain to them that it was not in their sins, but from their sins that they were to be saved, and made heirs of eternal life.

"But while he taught sound doctrine, and rebuked sin, and openly opposed and battled against Sabbathbreaking, drunkenness, and every kind of vice, he was not indifferent to those great questions, partly moral and partly political, that began, even in his day, to be widely and earnestly agitated. One of these was Slavery, another was Temperance. On the latter question he stood early in the front ranks of those who pledged themselves, and endeavored to persuade others to pledge themselves, against the use as a beverage of any kind of spirituous liquors. As to wine, beer and cider — this apparently innocent trio had not then been put under ban as the sly and sure tempters and betrayers of men into the paths of drunkenness that they really were. But before his death he was ready, with the great mass of Christians everywhere, to put these also on the list of intoxicating drinks that were to be totally abstained from.

" But this earnest and devoted pastor was not always solemn and serious, nor was he always occupied in meditating upon or discussing theological and moral subjects. He had a fine social nature, and enjoyed good company and good living, as T believe "the cloth" generally do. He made purely social as well as pastoral visits, and was never so happy as when entertaining his elders, or other intimate friends in the congregation, at his own board.

Early Times. II

" It was often my good fortune as a boy to visit my cousins of the old brown parsonage, and to see the minister, their father, in the midst of his every day life. In the family sitting-room, at the dinner-table, or about the farm in homely garb, he seemed quite like other folks — pleasant and talkative, taking an interest in ordinary affairs.

" But if I came upon him in his study, — and I chanced sometimes to blunder into that sacred place, supposing him to have stepped out — a spirit of awe seized me ; and if he spoke to me, or asked me any question, I was speechless. But generally, at such a time, being absorbed in thought, meditating his Sunday's sermon perhaps, he would pay no heed to me, but with finger to forehead and eyes closed, or fixed on a passage of Scripture lying before him, he would remain undisturbed, and I would escape as quietly as I could.

" Doubtless this awe of him in his study — a darkened little room, with Bibles, and Missionary Heralds, and ancient-looking volumes of divinity lying around — was owing more to my imagination than to anything stern, or severe, or catechetical in this little man whom people called reverend. In other and proper places he enjoyed a laugh and was as jolly as the youngest of us. Nevertheless, I was not able to get rid of the awe that that quiet study and its darkcoated occupant inspired.

" Rev. Johnston Eaton was not a man possessing those qualities that attract the admiration and secure the noisy applause of men. He was quite without worldly ambition. Modest and unpretending, he was yet a bold advocate of the truth, and fearless in defence of what he believed to be right. By his high personal character, his purity of life, his open condemnation of all laxity of principle, and all forms of immorality and whatever tended thereto, as well as by his preaching the pure Gospel of the grace of God, he exerted a vast influence for good upon a wide spread community — an influence that still continues to be felt in many churches and in a thousand homes : So that in truth, 'he being dead, yet speaketh.' "

The mother of Dr. Eaton was entirely worthy of such a husband. Her father had died when she was a child, and with four other children, three sisters and one brother, she being the eldest of the family, her training and education had fallen to the care of a faithful and God-fearing mother. She was the first to marry and leave the quiet and pleasant farm-house in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, that had been her only home — resolutely saying like Rebekah, when asked by Isaac's messenger if she would go to the far off country and be the wife of his master, " I will go" — though it involved hardship and self-denial, beginning with a journey on horseback of many days through a wild region of country, and ending in making her home in a log cabin with a poorly paid minister and among people who had just begun to cut out for themselves little farms and make for themselves rude homes in the woods. A few years afterwards her sister Martha, ten years her junior, came with her to the Lake Shore region when she had been back to

Early Times. 13

the old home at the foot of the Laurel Hills on a visit ; and thereafter remained with her till, in 1818, she married Andrew Caughey, whose father was one of the earliest settlers in Erie County (1803) — the young couple establishing their home seven miles nearer the town of Erie than the minister's house was. Thereafter the sisters were a great comfort to one another, and regrets for the old home grew less and less as the years passed on and family cares and pleasures increased.

Mrs. Eaton was of a cheerful disposition, full of charity and good deeds. She looked well to the ways of her household. But she was not of the kind that worry and fret. Her trust in God was strong and unfailing. If at any time the larder was almost empty, and the meat barrel reduced to nothing but brine, the Lake, swarming with excellent fish, was not far off, and the forest just at the door was full of the finest game, which even the minister could bring down with his old flint-lock fowling-piece. There was always some resource; and "The Lord will provide" was a text seldom absent from the hearts of these faithful servants of God.

While the mistress of the humble parsonage was not anxious, she was careful and thoughtful; and not only provided for the physical wants of her growing family, but was even more careful to look after their spiritual interests, and practically to follow St. Paul's rule, and " bring up her children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." She was also a woman of refined taste. She made her home attractive with flowers, of which she was exceedingly fond, and with pictures and such articles of decoration as with her slender means she could command. She believed in the power of home influence, and acted on the principle that

4 'Home makes the man, and woman makes the home." Of her it could be said with entire truth, as of every true home-making woman :

"Her care, her patient toil, her blithesome ways ; Her gentle teachings in our infant days — Her pleasant words, her sunny smile, her face Of beauty or of goodness, and her grace In manner and in mind — these are the spell That draws our willing hearts at home to dwell. For she and home are one, and ne'er apart Can one without the other fill the heart."

Under the care of such a father and mother, and in a home — primitive and plain indeed, but made attractive and helpful with the purest and best things — did Mills Eaton grow up to manhood, watched and taught and cared for, and supplied with all the elements of training and influence that serve to form the noblest and best character in a Christian man.

Chapter II. Home And School Days

Mills Eaton was intellectually bright and quick as a child. He had learned to read before he was three years old. Although active and playful like most children — taking delight in out-door sports ; wandering through the thick woods that were not far from his father's door; racing over the fields among the half burnt stumps and logs, chasing the red-squirrels along the fences, or setting cage-traps for the wild pigeons ; he was yet for the most part a sedate and thoughtful child.

He soon knew why he had been baptized Samuel John Mills; and the fact that he bore the name of that brilliant and devoted young Missionary, who had been called to his high reward at so early an age, made a deep impression on him. Like Timothy, " from a child " he had " known the Holy Scriptures, which/' as in the case of that young minister, St. Paul's " own son in the faith," were not only " able to " but, as we have reason to believe, actually did, even in his childhood, " make him wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus."

He soon began to read the Bible in course ; for we find him noting, while a student in College, that at a certain date (May 14th, 1843), he had " finished reading the Bible in course for the fifth time;" adding devoutly to the record, "O how love I thy law!"

From infancy, even from the time when the drops of baptismal water fell upon his forehead, he had evidently been dedicated to God by his parents as a minister of the Gospel. As one of his older brothers says of him : " I cannot tell at what age his religious experience commenced ; but it seems to me he was always a Christian." He was conscientious and truthful, and by his personal character and conduct more than by his words he was influential for good — it might almost be said, "a means of grace" — to other members of the family. And one of them, turning her thoughts back to these early days at home, says : " When a little girl I feared to do anything that was not just right before him more than before my father. Not that he would reprove me more severely; but the sad, or rather the sorrowful look that he would give me, went to my heart at once."

While quiet and serious, and much given to reading, he was by no means a recluse. He was a pleasant-tempered boy, and members of his family do not remember his ever using a harsh word to his father or mother, or to his brothers and sisters. If sometimes crossed in his desires or plans, or nettled by word or deed of others, as must have happened now and then in so numerous a family of active and healthy boys and girls, he must have early learned to repress resentment and curb his tongue. Though not given to frivolity, he was often witty and humorous. He was quick to see the ludicrous side of a thing, and enjoyed a laugh as much as his less sober-minded brothers and sisters; and this trait remained with him throughout

Hotne and School Days. ij

life. He knew from childhood that he was to be a preacher; but this did not lead him to set himself up as Sir Oracle, or incline him to play the pharisee, or to put on any I-am-holier-than-thou airs.

He was ingenius in mechanism, and in carving figures in wood of men and animals. He had a talent for drawing which served him in good stead in after life. He had also his mother's taste for flowers and gardening; and altho' never much inclined towards work or bodily exercise, he was skillful in devising and in making plans for others. In matters of proportion and artistic form he was seldom at fault.

He acquired the rudiments of education at his mother's knee, learning to read quickly. But when still a child he went to school, with his bigger brothers and sisters, in the school-house that stood for many years on the Ridge Road near what is now Fairview village. It was a walk of nearly two miles from his father's house to this small unpainted wooden building; and here he would sit for six mortal hours, divided into two equal sections by an extra hour at noon for play and lunch, his little feet and legs dangling from a bench placed in front of one of the desks assigned to the larger scholars ; and then trudge back over the two miles of mud or snow or dust to his mother's much-loved sitting-room. This primitive way of acquiring an education was gone on with day after day for five or six years, and the " three R's," with geography and grammar, and a dip into algebra, were pretty thoroughly mastered.