Amos Eaton

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For the American Civil War officer, see Amos Beebe Eaton.

Amos Eaton
Born(1776-05-17)May 17, 1776
Chatham, New York
DiedMay 10, 1842(1842-05-10) (aged 66)
Troy, New York
NationalityAmerican
Alma materWilliams College
Known for
Spouses
Polly Thomas
​
​
(m. 1799; died 1803)​
[1]: p. 195 
Sally Cady
​
​
(m. 1803; died 1816)​
[1]: p. 196 
Anna Bradley
​
​
(m. 1816; died 1826)​
[1]: p. 198 
Alice Johnson
​
​
(m. 1827)​
[1]: p. 226 
Children
Castleton Medical College
Rensselaer School
Author abbrev. (botany)Eaton
Signature

Amos Eaton (May 17, 1776 – May 10, 1842) was an American

Mary Mason Lyon, the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (Mount Holyoke College). Eaton held the rank of senior professor at Rensselaer until his death in 1842.[10][11]

Life

Eaton's Herbarium, published in 1830, including one hundred and eleven specimens labeled in his handwriting.
Eaton's Herbarium, published in 1830, includes one hundred eleven specimens labeled in his handwriting.[12]

Amos Eaton was born at

Dover, England in 1635, settling two years later in Dedham, Massachusetts Bay Colony
. Amos Eaton showed early preference for nature, by the age of sixteen constructing his own compass and chain to survey land as a chain bearer.

Eaton was sent to Williamstown with the Rev. Dr. David Potter, of Spencertown, to study at Williams College. After graduating in 1799 with high marks in natural philosophy, he married the Polly Thomas in October the same year. She died in 1802, leaving him a son. In 1805 he married Sally Cady who bore him five sons. In New York, Eaton formed an association with naturalists David Hosack and Samuel L. Mitchill and under their influence, he became committed to the natural sciences, and in particular botany.

Nevertheless, Eaton pursued a legal career and arranged to study law with Elisha Williams, of Spencertown, and Josiah Ogden, of New York. In 1802 he was admitted to the bar and in 1804 received permission to practice before the Supreme Court of New York. Eaton worked as a lawyer and as a land agent in Catskill, New York. He became deeply involved in land-speculation and was charged with forgery in 1810, possibly as a result of securing a loan using property that was already mortgaged. He was found guilty and spent nearly five years in Newgate Prison, the state penitentiary at Greenwich Village. While in prison he formed a friendship with a young John Torrey, whose father was a city alderman and fiscal agent for the prison. Torrey would bring Eaton books while Eaton in turn would tutor his protege in the basics of botany.[13] In 1815 he was released with a pardon from Daniel D. Tompkins, the governor of New York.[6][14]

On his release in 1815, Eaton moved to New Haven at Yale College to take up the study of botany, chemistry and mineralogy under the tuition of Benjamin Silliman and Eli Ives. He then returned to Williams College to offer a course of lectures and volunteer classes of the students on botany, mineralogy zoology, and geology and published a botanical dictionary. In 1817, he published his Manual of Botany for the Northern States, the first comprehensive flora of the area; it ultimately went through eight editions. From Williams College the lectures were extended, in the shape of courses, with practical instructions to classes, to the larger towns of New England and New York.

He returned to New York in 1818 following Governor

Stephen Van Rensselaer III
, who hired him to produce A Geological Survey of the County of Albany, which was followed by geological surveys of much of the area through which the canal was built. Ultimately, Eaton completed a survey fifty miles wide from Buffalo to Boston.

Eaton delivered talks at the

Medical College at Castleton, Vermont, where he was appointed professor of natural history in 1820. He gave lectures and practical instructions in Troy
, laying the foundation of the Lyceum of Natural History. In 1820 and 1821, Eaton initiated geological and agricultural surveys of Albany and Rensselaer counties, which were financed by Van Rensselaer.

Rensselaer School

After co-founding the Rensselaer School in 1824, Van Rensselaer appointed Eaton to teach chemistry, experimental philosophy, geology, surveying, and the "laws regulating town officers and jurors."

mechanics' institutes and lyceum movements on diffusing useful knowledge. As a result, Eaton's system of instruction posed a challenge, if not a threat, to the traditional liberal-arts colleges, causing them to expand their own curricula and set up departments or schools of engineering and science.[3] Formal engineering education would not be added at Rensselaer until 1828. After becoming professor of natural history at Harvard College in 1842, Asa Gray required some practical work of all of his students in botany along the lines established by Amos Eaton.[10]

Eaton was interested in education for women, he had lectured them on his tour of New England, and he was persuaded that their failure in science was caused by inferior opportunity, not "perversion of female genius." Eaton, clearly hoped to educate females at the school. He believed that women were capable of learning practical science and mathematics; they simply had not been taught the subjects at traditional female academies. His commitment to the cause led Eaton to enroll a class of eight young women in a special mathematics course to show that they could advance beyond "the speculative geometry and algebra as generally practiced in female seminaries." When the students completed their course of study in 1835, Eaton requested a review of their progress by the school's less-than-enthusiastic board of examiners.[16] The eight young ladies who participated in Eaton's experiment continued their education at the Troy Female Seminary. Eaton trained a bevy of future, notable, scientists and lectured to countless later educationists.

Today Amos Eaton Hall houses the mathematics department, and the Amos Eaton Professorship is a faculty endowment named at the institute. The Amos Eaton Chair was originally given by students to Amos Eaton in 1839, but was later returned to the institute by the Eaton family.

Personal life

Following the death of his first wife, Polly Thomas, Eaton was remarried to Sally Cady in 1803, who bore him five sons. After her death he was remarried to Anna Bradley in 1816, by whom he had three sons and two daughters. She having died, Eaton married Alice Johnson in 1827, who bore him one son, and survived him about four years. Three of his children showed a preference for natural philosophy. Hezekiah Hulbert Eaton (1809-1832) became a chemist at Transylvania University but died at the age of twenty-three.[17] Major General Amos Beebe Eaton (1806-1877) was a U.S. Army officer interested in natural philosophy. Sara Cady Eaton (1818-1881) taught natural sciences and modern languages in a young woman's seminary at Monticello, Illinois. Eaton's grandson, Daniel Cady Eaton (1834-1895), professed botany at Yale College in the 1860s.[18]

Works

Amos Eaton published on agriculture, botany, engineering, geology, surveying, and zoology.

  • Art without Science (1800)
  • Elementary Treatise on Botany (1810)
  • Botanical Dictionary (1817) (2nd 1819, 4th ed. 1836)
  • Manual of Botany (1817)
  • Index to the Geology of the Northern States (1818)
  • Geological and Agricultural Survey of the County of Albany, New York (1820)
  • Chemical Notebook (1821)
  • Chemical Instructor (1822)
  • Cuvier's Grand Division (1822)
  • Geological Nomenclature of North America (1822)
  • Zoological Syllabus and Notebook (1822)
  • Geological and Agricultural Survey of the District adjoining the Erie Canal (1824)
  • Philosophical Instructor (1824)
  • Botanical Exercises (1825)
  • Botanical Grammar and Dictionary (1828)
  • Geological Text-Books Prepared for Popular Lectures on North American Geology (1830)
  • Directions for Surveying and Engineering (1838)
  • Geological Text-Book for the Troy Class (1841)
The standard author abbreviation Eaton is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[19]

Eaton's students

See also

Bibliography

  • Duane Isely, One hundred and one botanists, Iowa State University Press (1994), p. 143-144
  • Ray Palmer Baker, A Chapter in American Education: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1824-1924., Charles Scribner's Sons: NY(1924).[1]
  • Palmer C. Ricketts, History of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1824–1934. John Wiley & Sons: NY (1934, Third Edition).[2]
  • Amos Eaton, John Batchelder, and Stephen Williams lectures on medical jurisprudence. 1821–1824. Located in: Modern Manuscripts Collection, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD; MS C 326.[20]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Ballard, Harlan Hoge (1897). Amos Eaton. Pittsfield, Massachusetts: Press of the Sun Printing Company. Retrieved February 28, 2014.
  2. S2CID 143767294
    .
  3. ^
    JSTOR 1978187
    .
  4. ^ Ricketts, Palmer C. (1914). History of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: 1824-1914. New York: J. Wiley & Sons. Retrieved February 27, 2014.
  5. ^ a b Youmans, William Jay (1896). Pioneers of Science in America: Sketches of Their Lives and Scientific Work. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Retrieved February 26, 2014.
  6. ^
    JSTOR 23134798
    .
  7. ^ Good, H. G. (1941). "Amos Eaton (1776-1842)". Scientific Monthly. 53: 464–469.
  8. ^ McAllister, E. M. (1941). Amos Eaton: Scientist and Educator (1776-1842). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
  9. ^ Rezneck, S. (1971). In Charles Coulston Gillispie [ed.], Dictionary of Scientific Biography, volume 4. NY: Scribner & Sons.
  10. ^
    JSTOR 2445926
    .
  11. ^ Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1887). Biographical Record of the Officers and Graduates of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1824-1886. Troy, NY: W.H. Young. Retrieved March 3, 2014.
  12. JSTOR 23304820
    .
  13. ^ "John Torrey: Early Influences » New York Botanical Garden". New York Botanical Garden. Retrieved August 5, 2021.
  14. ^ Dorpfeld, David (November 24, 2020). "Greene History Notes: The Unusual Life of Amos Eaton". HudsonValley360. Retrieved August 5, 2021.
  15. ^ Brubacher, J. S.; Rudy, W. (1997). Higher education in transition: A history of American colleges and universities. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction.
  16. ^ "RPI Women: Beginnings 1824 to 1835". RPI.edu. Retrieved February 27, 2014.
  17. JSTOR 41609823
    .
  18. ^ "Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History: Daniel Cady Eaton". Yale.edu. Retrieved February 27, 2014.
  19. ^ International Plant Names Index.  Eaton.
  20. ^ "Amos Eaton, John Batchelder, and Stephen Williams lectures on medical jurisprudence 1821-1824". National Library of Medicine.[permanent dead link]

Further reading

External links

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