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ftfi^^ht^ . £i £

?SiBtllmm €aton

iWemorial S^betcb

Wtdtam €aton

1803

Born ^cptembei; 30, 1823

DicD 6S^ap 3, 1893

Et aitdivi vocem <h caelo, dicenteiv mihi :
Scribe : Biati mm'tui, qui in Domino moriuntur.
Amodo, jam dicit ISpirilns : nt r&piiencant a luhor-
ihus suis; opera eniin iUorum scqnnntiir illos.

(LlliUiam (2Baton

IN iml)lic! ami in privsiti', so inuiiy res petit fill and
tundiM- trilmtos liuvo Ikhmi piiid, Hint-e liis dt-atli,
to William Katon, that it Beems fitting that his own
childivn, who know him lu-st, hIiouM say a IVw
words concerning his cliarai-ter and life. Mis |ier-
sonaiity was one that slionid not licsnlTered to fade
from the meniory at least of any wlio were coi/-
nected with him hy ties of Idood or ch)SO friend-
ship; and so niueh, aa it now appears, did lie in his
public otlieial life endear himself to those lussociated
with liim,that no apology is otfered for pntting he-
fore tiiem a little more careful ac<'ount than lias yet
been given of our revered father. Such an estimate
could scarcely have been made while he was alive,
but now, alas! the change has come which sets
every life in true perspective.

In ITfiO, five years afterlhe tragical expulsion of
the Acadian French, the founders of many of the
county families of Nova Scotia, uieu of the best

New Eiigliind stock, removed from Massacjhusetts,
liliodu Island, or Coiiiieeticut, to the fertile Pntv-
iiice of Nova Seotia, where tliey became owners
of vahmble tracts of land tiiut before the expulsion
had belonged to the Acadians. This land-owner-
Blii}» gave them tiie importance of large planters,
not the least of their wealth l.ying in the rich dyke
lands abont the Basin of Minas and the tidal
streams. In the beantifnl " Evangeline Country,"
Boon after erected into the County of Kings, many
of these planters settled, founding the greater num-
ber of what have always been the leading families of
the county, the Hclchers, Chipnians. Cogswells, De
Wolfs, Eatons, Harrises, Rands, Starrs, and Wood-
worths. The chief representative, in the county, of
the Eaton family, in the last generation, was our
grand father. Ward Eaton. Esij., who married his first
cousin, Deborah Eaton, l)()th of them being grand-
children of the founders of the family in Nova
Scotia, Mr. David Eaton, and his wife Deborah
White. Of our grandparents no words of eulogy
are too strong to be spoken. They were people of
unusual dignity, high breeding, and superior sense.
Their home in Cornwallis had about it the atmos-
phere of true refinement, and in their presence

rudeness or meanness could not stay. " T!io Scjuire,"
as Mr. Eaton was often simply called, was both
loved and feared, for although no man was ever
more generous and kindly than lie, his convictions
of justice were strong, and in his puMic life, and in
all his judgments of men, he was quick to detect
falsehood and wrong. He lived in the days, which
seem far away now, of fierce strife in Nova Scotia
between the old liberal and conservative parties —
the " Howe and Johnston " times — and his political
sympathies, as became a gentleman of theoldscluxd
as he was, were strongly on the "Tory" side. Of
our dear grandmother, no one who remembers her
can ever speak except with deep respect and love.
She was a woman of exalted qualities of mind and
rare gifts of heart ; and it is no disparagement
to others to say that she was probably the most
widely known and best loved wom.in of her time
in the county. All her husband's hospitalities she
warmly secomJcd, and many distinguished i)ersons
throughout the Province held her in high esteem.

By such parents William Eaton was reared, and
as he grew up it was evident that he had inherited
many of the qualities of both. To his father's
strong, clear, discriminating mind, generous im.

pulses, and courteous luamiers, he joined his
mother's gentleness, patience, and self-forgetfulness.
Of all her six children he was, we think, the most
like her, and the loving way in which she invariably
spoke his name, gave us unconsciously the feeling
that he was a little the nearest her heart.

The great fact concerning a man, as Carlyle has
said, is his religion, and our father's nature was so
deeply religious that in any estimate of him his
religion should not be passed by. Of a family
that for six generations before his parents, had been
Puritan Congregationalists, his views were natu-
rally Calvinistic, and all his life the present to him
was simply a preparation time for better things
beyond. lie lived with a profound, personal sense
of God, and died as he lived. But in his definite
theological opinions, he was too much of a reader
and too clear-minded not to feel, as time went on,
the influence of rational thought, and while he
rarely discussed theology, being constitutionally
reticent iii religion, he gave many evidences in
later years that his opinions had undergone some-
what of the common change.

That which is the basis of true religion, however,
sense of duty, with him never weakened. His love

for the right was a rock against whieli temptation
of all sorts boat in vain. His jiidgnients were,
doubtlu«3, aonietinies wrong, but there must be few
men in the world with conseioiices more undeliled
than his. One of liis most marked eharacteristics
was his love for reading. He was not insensible to
human companionship, or the charms of society,
biit give him a book or a newspaper, and ho was
always perfectly content to be alone. He was not
free from regard for the good opinion of others,
but the morbid desire to l)e conspicuous that char-
acterizes so many, and indeed all purely seliish am-
bitions, were foreign to his luitnre. An atmosphere
of thought and en<|uiry, through his inllueiice, per-
vaded his home, and his children will always re-
member with pleasure the dignilied, clear English,
an English formed from intercourse with the best
classics of our tongue, that he always spoke and
encouraged his family to speak. In early life be
was strict, even stern, in discipline, and unable
sometimes to enter into his children's younger ways
of thought, but there was never a time, when for
them, or for his wife, whom ho loved with rare de-
votion, ho would not have cut off his right baud,
had he felt that their welfare required it. In the

course of years he grew not less but much more
sympathetic with ways of thought tliat diil'ered from
his own, and after the death of his wife the mel-
lowing process in his whole nature was so complete
that he constantly seemed to grow more true a
saint.

The facts of his public life and service are
briefly these. f]ducated at the Cornwallis schools,
and at Ilorton Academy, in his seventeenth year
ho entered the i)rofesaion of teaching, and for
fourteen years was a highly successful teacher,
especially of mathematics and classics. In 1854
he was appointed a Commissioner of Schools, which
ottice he held, except during an interval of three
years, for the rest of his life. Ii\ 18(55 the Govern-
ment, acting through the Council of Public In-
Htriiction, conferred upon him the important otKce
of Inspector of ScIhioIs fur Kings County, in which
he was succeeded hy the Itev. Robert Somerville,
now of Nov,' York, in 18<!S. At the time of his
appointment the Free School Act had just come
into force, and his pacific temper and his courteous
treatment of the iieople of the county did much to-
wards allaying the discontent it had aroused.

In 1S51> he was appointed a Commissioner in the

:i|p^^i«:.

-il#»#-S»^..

\il

Supreme Court of tlie Province, imd in 1870, as
liis fatiier hail lievn before him, a .1 iistice of the
Peace. Sixteen years later, in 188(>, the shire town
of Kentville, where he had long resided, one of
the oldest and most beautiful viilaj^es in tiie
Province, \va.s incorporated, and the prominent
part he had always taken in its pui)lic affairs, and
his high standing in the community naturally gave
him a place on its first Council Hoard. Soon after
he was iiskcd to accept the rcs|ionsilile position of
(^Icrk and Tresisurer of the town, and this doulile
office he held until liis death.

In early manh.xHl our fatlier settled in Kentville,
where after some yeai-s he married Anna Augusta
Willuughby Hamilton, his l)rother .lohn Kufus,
also, soon after marrying her sister Josephine.

Our mother was the youngest daughter of Otlio
and Maria Starr Hamilton ; a descendant of one of
the well-known branches of the Scottish Hamiltons
(her grandfather having been born and educated
in Scotland), and of the American Starrs, and
De Wolfs ; and a near connexion of the Willoughbys.
Her family belonged to tiie Church of Kngland, and
she and our father were married by the Ilev. .lohn
Storrs, father of the present popular Vicar of St.

Peter's, Eaton Square, London, at St. James Church,
Kentville, a clnircli identified with much of our
family's history in the past and now. On their
marriage our parents settled in Kentville, always
our mother's home, and gradually our father ac-
quired a valuable • .ty, which he continually
more and more gnt to improve. Our dear
mother was a proud, sensitive woman, of acknow-
ledged beauty, and with a loving, tender heart.
She, too, died suddenly, at the early age of fifty-
tive, on the twenty-third of September, 1883, and
not only her sad family circle, but society at large,
mourned for her as one of its most useful members.
Of our father's relations in the Eaton name were
hifi first cousins the late Colonel Daniel Eaton, of
Washington, D. C, the late Mr. George Eaton, of
St. John, New Brunswick, Clement Belcher Eaton,
of St. Stephen, and Brenton Halliburton Eaton, of
Halifax. Other more distant cousins wore General
John Eaton, of Washington, and Wyatt Eaton, one
of the most eminent portrait and figure painters of
our day. His nearest relations of other names
were among the Ulisses, Rands, and Whites. He
was connected distantly with both the Bliss fami-
lies of New Brunswick, to one of which belonged

ivm

Chief Justice Joiiatlian and liis son .Tu(l;,'e William
Blowers Bliss; to the other Judj^e Daniel and his
6011 Judge John Murray Bliss, and the mother of
Sir Lemuel Allan Wiliiiot.

His White relations were exelneively in the
United States, the most eminent of thciti, perhaps,
being the late Mr. llicliard Grant White. His
children are six, two of them graduates of Harvard,
and all holding honorable positions in society. One
of his sons is a clergyman of the Episcopal Church
in New York, and another a lawyer and j)ro8e-
cuting attorney in the State of Washington. His
only daughter is the wife of Mr. George A. Layttm,
of H. M. Customs in Truro, and his most dearly
loved daughter-in-law, the wife of his youngest son,
is a dangliter of the late Mr. James II. Thorne, of
Halifax.

Of our father's last sickness the facts arc few.
A week before liis death he left his otlico as usual,
after a hard day's work, and in the evening wafi
seized with a violent chill which shortly developed
into pneumonia. On Wednesday, May third, he
died at " Elmwood," the honi« where the benedic-
tion of his presence had so long been felt, and then
we began to know how much the people among

wlioiii liis lift' liad gone on, valued and loved liiin.
His funeral was the largest and most touching ever
known in the county. The schools were closed, the
court Wii8 KURj)cnded, public resolutions were passed,
beautiful flowers were sent, and with universal
sorrow he was borne to rest. Not the least touch-
ing tribute was that paid him by the children of the
schools, who went into the woods and with their own
hands plucked great <|uantities of Mayflowers for
his casket. With masses of these beautiful native
flowers, just then in bloom, his grave in " The Oaks"
was lined : and so our father slept.

The order of his funeral was as follows :

The Mayor anij Town Council

The HoAun ok School Commissioners

Ex-Mayors and Ex-Councillors

Town Officials

Officiating Clkroymen

The Body

(borne by Ex-otticiala of the Town)

Mourners

A Lar(;e Concourse of Citizens

At the gate of the cemetery the Town Council,
School Commissioners, and Town Oflicials, who had

preceded the body divided into two linen, uncover-
ing, as the casket was hornc within. Then tliey
solemnly fell behind the bier, and so psissed to
the grave.

At a public Memorial Service held in Kentville,
a few days after our father's death, Judge ('hi|)uiaii,
with whom and whose family he lia<l always been
on terms of the closest intimacy, said : "In looking
back over the past I cannot think of a single in-
stance in which Mr. Eaton failed to exemplify the
right. He wjis a man of sterling character and pure
life, doing nothing from selfish motives, but seeking
only the highest welfare of the community. I
thank (iod for the noble example he has set us, for
the seeds of kindness he scattered by the way, for
his gentleness and urbanity, for his unsullied repu-
tation, and his blameless Christian character and
life." To such praise as this a newsjiaper editorial
about t!ie same time added : " Mr. Eaton has filled
many public positions both provincial and munici-
pal, and in none of these have his probity and in
tegrity ever been questioned."

Since his death a multitude of letters of sympathy
have been received l)y his children, from various
parts of the country aiul from abroad, some of them

most toncliing in their expressionB of love and re-
spect. " He was one of Niiturc's noblemen," their
writers say. "He died as he lived, a Christian
gentleman, honored and respected by all." "A
better man truly never lived or died. He could not
have had one enemy in the whole world."