THEODORE HORATIO EATON A third of a century has gone by since Theodore H. Eaton paused away, but Detroit still feels the benefit of his labors, for he was one of the pioneer business men and merchants of the city and aided in laying broad and deep the foundation upon which has been built the present progress and prosperity of Detroit. In every relation of life his worth was widely acknowledged and to enjoy his acquaintance was to know one who in every way measured up to the fullest and highest standards of manhood and of citizenship. A native of Now Jersey, he was born in New Brunswick, in October, 1813, his parents being Horatio Woodruff Eaton and Maria Stitea (Montgomery) Eaton. He was descended through Ave generations from Thomas Eatton (who died November 20, 1088), at Eatontown, New Jersey, of which place he was virtually the founder, the town being named in his honor. Thomas Eatton migrated from England to America about 1600, and for a brief period was a resident of Rhode Island, after which he took up his abode in New Jersey and became a prominent and influential citizen of that state. Mr. Eaton's earliest immigrant ancestor, removed by seven generations, was Governor Thomas Moyhew, who was born in Southampton, England, in 1301 and died in Edgartown, Massachusetts, in 1681. He was governor and commander of Martha's Vineyard and the adjacent island in 1641, 1664 and 1673-74. The maternal grandmother of Theodore H. Eaton was Mrs. Mary Berrien Montgomery, a daughter of Judge John Berrien of Rocky Hill, New Jersey, lineal ancestor of Colonel John McPherson Berrien of Detroit, who was civil engineer of the Michigan Central Railroad and the man in whose honor Berrien county was named. General Washington wrote his farewell address to the continental army while a guest in the homo of Margaret Eatton Berrien, the widow of Judge John Berrien, at Rocky Hill, near Princeton, New Jersey, on the 1st of December, 1783. During the boyhood of Theodore H. Eaton his parents removed with their family from their home in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to Lowville, New York, where he was reared to adult age and acquired a good academic education. In his youth he was apprenticed to learn the drug business in the establishment of John and William Williams of Ithaca, New York, and following the completion of the Erie Canal this firm established a western branch in Buffalo, New York, and Theodore H. Eaton was transferred there after the great fire which visited that city in the early '30s. In 1834 he was admitted to a partnership in the business, following the retirement of Robert Hollister. The panic of 1837 seriously crippled many western merchants and through an incidental financial embarrassment of this nature, Mr. Eaton was able eventually to acquire the established drug business of Riley & Ackerly of Detroit, thus becoming an active factor in the mercantile circles of the city is 1838 and his same company is still doing business under the As me of Eaton-Clark Company. He retained his interest in the firm of Williams Brothers in Buffalo until 1842, when he retired, and in May of the same year became a resident of Detroit. Prior to his removal to the then western city ho married, in 1830, Miss Anne Eliza Olbba of Skaneatclea, New York (born March 4, 1818, died November 6, 1870), and lived there instead of in Buffalo from that time until 1842. Prior to this time Mr. Eaton had made several trips to Michigan, traveling through life west on horseback, making collections for the Buffalo house, in which he was financially interested. With his entrance into the commercial circles of Detroit he soon won recognition as an able and representative business man and his sound judgment and enterprise were manifest in the constant growth of the trade. Before his removal lo Detroit, after he bad purchased the business of Hiley and Ackerly, the store was under the effective supervision of David A. McNair, and after Mr. Eaton's removal to Detroit in 1842 Mr. McNair became a partner in the business and so continued for a brief period. Mr. Eaton continued the business in Detroit and year by year his trade developed and grew with the growth and progress of the city. When a great fire swept away much of the business section of Detroit in 1848, his establishment at the corner of Jefferson avenue and Randolph street in the American Hotel Block was burned to the ground. Ho then established his offices in the Cooper Block nearer Woodward avenue, and later in 184B be built his new brick building at the corner of Woodward avenne (now 204) and Atwater street, where be remained to the time of his death in 1898, developing a trade of large and gratifying proportions and in which same location the Eaton-Clark Company still remains. For an extended period the business was earned on under the well known firm name of Theodore H. Eaton A Son, the son entering the business in 1839 and being admitted to a partnership in 1888 at the age of twenty four. Following the death of Mr. Eaton's son the name was changed In 1911 to the present style of Eaton-Clark Company. At a later period. Mr. Eaton became identified with the first gas company of Detroit. In fact he was one of Its organizers In 1832, the business being carried on under the name of the Detroit Light Company. lie held a Urge amount of stock in this enterprise until the plant and business were sold, but he would never accept office In the company. He was also a heavy stockholder in the Detroit Locomotive Works and the Peninsular Iron Works. To Mr. and Mrs. Eaton were born three children: Theodore H. Jr., who succeeded to his father's various business interests and of whom further mention is made elsewhere in this work; Mary Montgomery, born June 12, 1847, who became the wife of Captain Thomas W. Lord of the United States army, and who died in Texas, July 7, 1880; and a daughter, Eliza MeCoskry, born August 9, 1843, who died in infancy, on October 12, 1844. Mr. Eaton was ever actuated by a spirit of marked devotion to tho general good and to the welfare of his fellowmen. He was very active in connection with the founding and promoting of St. Luke's Hospital and remained one of its stalwart advocates and supporters to the lime of his death. He was a consistent and loyal members of the Protestant Episcopal church and did much to promote the growth of the denomination in Michigan. He held the office of senior war- den in St. Paul's parish for Many years until his death, when be was succeeded by his son, and was a most liberal supporter of the church, while to various benevolent projects he gave generously but always unostentatiously. In politics he was a whig and later a democrat, but his public service was done as a private citizen and not as an office-holder. In 1852 he completed the erection of his residence on Jefferson avenue, which was one of the most beautiful and modern homes in Detroit and the farthest out on Jefferson avenue, in fact the only house east of Brush street. Although it was three years later, 1655, before a gas plant was established in Detroit Mr. Eaton's house was then the first home installed with gas equipment. During tho time of building he resided at the Beecher hotel, corner Jefferson and Brush, the fashionable hostelry of that time. The death of Mrs. Eaton occurred in 1879, and nine years later Mr. Eaton died. Detroit mourned the loss of one of her honored and representative citizens— one who had been connected with her welfare and development from the drat half of the nineteenth century. He belonged to that class of progressive men who were the real promoters and builders of the middle west. He recognized tho possibilities of this section of the country and he labored to utilize to the fullest advantage every opportunity that meant benefit and up building to Detroit. Tho name of Theodore H. Eaton will ever remain an honored one on the pages of Michigan's history. The city of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922, Volume 3 edited by Clarence Monroe Burton, William Stocking, Gordon K. Miller

THEODORE HORATIO EATON JR Theodore H. Eaton Jr. of Detroit, the son of Theodore H. Eaton, whoso biography appears above in this work, and Anne Eliza Gibbs, was born in Skanenteles, New York, January 16, 1842, in the home where his mother spent her childhood, and where his parents were married in 1839 and lived until May, 1842. He died in Detroit on November 6, 1910, following a short illness. He was taken to Detroit when four months old, and his father's large residence on Jefferson avenue, near Russell street, was completed in 1852 when he was ten years old. This remained his home until his death fifty-eight years later, and was occupied by his widow and children for only a few years afterward. It is still owned by his family and occupied in the capacity of a hospital. Mr. Eaton was educated at the school of the Rev. M. H. Hunter, on Grosse Ile during the earliest days of his boyhood, with others who have since gained considerable prestige in the city and in later years were known as the "Hunter Boys." Mr. Eaton was president of this alumni society 1885 1890. He also was a student at Burlington College, New Jersey. Another one of the schools he attended 1858-59 was the French Institute of Monsieur (the Professor) Elie Charlier, located then at 48 East Twenty fourth street, New York city, and thereafter he went abroad for study and business training before entering his father's chemical business in the year 1859. Instead of electing to attend a university he visited the dye and chemical institutions of England, Switzerland and Germany, which was the basis of his knowledge of those trades in later years, making in all four trips abroad. In 1866 he was admitted to the partnership known as Theo. H. Eaton & Son, then located at the corner of Woodward avenue and Atwator street, which remained his office to the time of his death. He received an excellent business training under his father who was one of the most prominent business men of the city. Later it was necessary for him to give more and more time to his personal affairs and Mr. Benjamin F. Geiger acted as his manager in the chemical business. At Mr. Geiger's death in 1905, Mr. Eaton's nephew, Rufus W. Clark, Jr., look his place and developed the business until and after Mr. Eaton's death in 1910 when it became known as Eaton-Clark Company. In 1920 Mr. Clark was succeeded as president of the company by Mr. Eaton's son. Mr. Eaton was married in 1830 at Augusta, Georgia, to Miss Louise Casey, to whom a son, Louis, was born. He died in infancy, September 21, 1882, and his mother died September 15, 1862. At this time Mr. Eaton was a vestryman of St. Paul's chimer, of which his father was senior warden, and in 1888, at his father's death, he succeeded him and remained senior warden for twenty-two years, until he died. In 1895 he built, in memory of his mother, the new St. Paul's Chapel at the corner of Woodward and Hancock, which was opened by Bishop Davies on February 0, 1896. The building was so located that space was left for the erection of a cathedral adjacent which was planned at that time, and completed just a few months after Mr. Eaton's death. During the construction of the cathedral Mr. Eaton drove up to supervise it regularly every morning before going to his office. Ho broke ground for it, ho attended the laying of the cornerstone, but did not live to sec its ultimate completion. A few months before his death Mr. Eaton ordered a beautiful carved, dean's chair, and altar railing to be erected in memory of his father, former senior warden of the church. These memorials now stand and above them a magnificent stained window in memory of Mr. Eaton of this review given by his widow and children. This same window was earlier selected by Mr. Eaton himself with a view to potting it in later on. Bishop Charles D. Williams delivered a memorial address in the cathedral on Sunday, April 19, 1911, of which an extract shows better than the editor could review Mr. Eaton's life and interest: "He was in a large manner public-spirited; interested in all tho best things that concerned the public welfare; generous and benevolent in his gifts everywhere and always, but the first and foremost of his public narrative was his devotion and loyalty to his church—St. Paul 'a cathedral was tho dream of his heart—but, by one of those strange dispensations of Providence, it was not to be, that he should see the completion of his cherished plans. It stands here largely as a memorial, not only of his benevolence, but of his thought and of his care." An appropriate sermon in memory of Mr. Eaton was also delivered on this occasion by tho Rev. Samuel 8. Marquis, D. D., then dean of the cathedral. The vestry of St. Paul's adopted the following tribute to Mr. Eaton's memory: "His simple and unostentatious manner of living in an era of luxury and display, upright and patriotic as a citizen and deeply concerned in the welfare of his country, state, and community, cultivated, refined, and courteous in his social intercourse with his fellows, pure, affectionate, and exemplary in his life, loyal and devoted to his church—the type of the true Christian gentleman." He was yearly elected as delegate to tho church conventions, in which he took deep interest. Next to his family and his church, his greatest affection and interest was in the Society of the Colonial Wars, in the State of Michigan, of which he was a charter member in November, 189", then elected its first deputy governor, which office he held until May 7, 1900, when he was elected governor of the Society. This office he held for a period of three years, and again in 19081909. He was a delegate to nearly all the sessions of the general assembly and whether in office or not, he was constantly solicitous for the welfare of the Society (Extract from Resolution of the Michigan Society, following his death). Coming from a long line of New England ancestors Mr. Eaton naturally affiliated with many of the patriotic and hereditary societies. He was a member of the Huguenot Society of America, the sons of tho American Revolution, Colonial Governors, The New England Society, Detroit Board of Commerce, The Detroit Club, Country Club, and the Detroit Boat Club. Ho was a director of tho Detroit Iron and Steel Company and advising director of the Security Trust Company. He was a republican and an Episcopalian. He enjoyed his recreation gardening on his summer estate at Kingsville, Ontario, Canada, where he spent about twenty summers, and in driving his selected teams of coach horses. On September 10, 1888, Mr. Eaton married Miss Eli to Walton Cork of Albany, New York, daughter of Rev. Rufus Wheelwright Clark, D. D., and Mrs. Clark, who was Eliza Walton. Mr. and Mrs. Eaton were married in Glenside Park, Murray Hill, New Jersey, by the latter's brother, Rev. William Walton Clark of Brooklyn, New York: Their children were: Theodore H. Eaton, Jr., born June 22, 1889, and who died May 5, 1891; Margaret Montgomery, bora May 9, 1802, was married April 17, 1920, to John Weeden Grout of New York city, formerly of Detroit; and Berrien Clark Eaton, born August 3, 1893, who married in Chicago, August 15, 1917, Miss Gladys Hambleton. Two grandchildren of Mr. Eaton are living, Berrien Clark Eaton, Jr., born February 12, 1919, in Chicago, and Margaret Louise Grout, bora April 8, 1921, in New York. The city of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922, Volume 3 edited by Clarence Monroe Burton, William Stocking, Gordon K. Miller

THEODORE HORATIO EATON JR Doing business under firm name of Theo. H. Eaton & Son, importer and dealer in chemicals and dye stuffs; born, Skaneatles, N. Y., Jan., 1842; son of Theodore H. and Anne Eliza (Gibbs) Eaton; educated in private schools of New York State, Charlier University, New York City, and by travel abroad; married in New Jersey, 1888, Miss Eliza Walton Clark. Began business career, 1859, in his father's chemical and dye house (founded, 1838), was admitted partnership, 1866, and upon death of his father, 1888, became sole proprietor of the business. Director Detroit Iron & Steel Co.; advisory director Security Trust Co. Member Society of Colonial Wars, Society of Colonial Governors, Huguenot Society of America, Sons of American Revolution, Detroit Board of Commerce. Republican. Episcopalian. Clubs: Detroit, Country. Recreation: Literature. Office: 26-30 Woodward Av. Residence: 484 Jefferson Av. The Book of Detroiters by Albert Nelson Marquis 1908