Nathaniel Eaton

Nathaniel Eaton (before 17 September 1609 − before 11 May 1674) was an Anglican clergyman who was the first Headmaster of Harvard, President designate, and builder of Harvard's first College, Yard, and Library, in 1636.

Nathaniel was the uncle of Samuel Eaton, one of the seven founding members and signatories of the Harvard Corporation by charter in 1650.

Harvard College's first building (1638–1670), as imagined by Samuel E. Morison

Early life and education The fifth or sixth son of the Reverend Richard Eaton (1565–1616), and Elizabeth [Okell]. Nathaniel was baptised in St Mary and All Saints' Church, Great Budworth, Cheshire, where his father was vicar, on 17 September 1609.

Eaton was educated at Westminster School, London. He attended Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, where he was a contemporary and friend of John Harvard, a student at Emmanuel College at the University of Cambridge.

He then attended the University of Franeker, where he studied under Rev. William Ames. Eaton later obtained a MD and PhD from the University of Padua, in Venetia.

Harvard College

In the fall of 1637, Eaton was appointed the first headmaster of the then-unnamed college which would later be named Harvard College, and was awarded 500 acres of land by the General Court of Massachusetts. He erected Harvard's first building, in 1636, called the Old College; named, fenced and planted the Harvard Yard called the College yard; established the colony's first printing press in March 1639, and created its first semi-public library, the Harvard Library. According to John Winthrop's account, Briscoe had been hired by Eaton for less than three days when a dispute broke out. Eaton ordered others to hold Briscoe in place while he beat him with "200 stripes" using a walnut tree branch that Winthrop describes as "large enough to have killed a horse". The only record of Eaton's own supposed confession was destroyed in a suspicious fire in the office of the historian James Savage (1784–1873), and the full extent of his guilt remains in doubt.

It is through the court case that we know that Eaton owned a slave referred to as "The Moor", in what is the earliest known record of slavery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During the trial students of Harvard complained about being served the same food as "The Moor". It is possible that "The Moor" had arrived a year earlier on the slave ship Desire. Through Benoni, Nathaniel has modern descendants.

Following the loss of his family, Eaton married the widow Anne (Graves) Cotton (1620–1684), the daughter of Captain Thomas Graves (1584–1635) of Virginia, becoming the brother-in-law of William Stone, the governor of the Province of Maryland, and family members with future Founding Fathers Thomas Stone and Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer.

Eaton served for several years as an assistant to the Anglican curate at Accomac, Virginia before returning to England, where he was appointed vicar of Bishop's Castle, Shropshire, in 1661 and rector of Bideford, Devon, in 1668. The intention of the footnote was to indicate that his brother had finally been repaid, and apparently Nathaniel had in part used the money to further his education. As for the £100, Thomas Symonds , a carpenter who apparently assisted in the building of the college at Cambridge in 1639 and afterwards. was found to be in debt to one of the college's creditors, John Cogan, for the same amount. The college building was poorly erected, and Symonds was the responsible party after Eaton left. Symonds and at least one of his assistants were ultimately incarcerated in debtor's prison.

Religious convictions Eaton left for England around 1652, where he had already been accepted back by the Church of England and honoured as a parish priest, though obviously he had his scruples, and was said to waver between devotion to his newly found home and that to his former.

In all likelihood, that "back and forthedness" and covering up set up a scenario of confusion, which seems to have confused every recordkeeper involved. Eaton died in 1674 in King's Bench Prison, where he had been incarcerated for a similar debt: quite probably the same £100 debt from which he had already been given relief. His imprisonment coincided with the Stuart Restoration, and was likely reposted on an old list that King Charles II's father had kept concerning those of lingering or questionable indebtedness. He was given a burial service on 11 May 1674 at St George the Martyr, Southwark, Surrey, England.

Confusion with Nathaniel Heaton of Boston

There was also Nathaniel (H)eaton, Heaten, wife, Elizabeth and children, who emigrated on the Griffin with William and Anne Marbury Hutchinson landing on 18 September 1634 in the town of Boston, but who spelled his name "Heaton". This Nathaniel Heaten was made free on 25 May 1636. Nathaniel Eaton of this article only arrived on the Hector on 28 June 1637, and was made a Freeman on 9 June 1638. In The Crooked and Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston – 1630–1822 by Annie Haven Thwing, Nathaniel Heaton is accurately cited.