John Eaton (General)
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John Eaton (1829-1906) was a US Commissioner of Education and a brevet brigadier general during the American Civil War.
He was born at Thetford, Vermont. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1854, studied at Andover Theological Seminary, and was ordained in 1862 to the Presbyterian ministry.
He served in the US Army during the American Civil War. In November of 1863, Ulysses S. Grant appointed him as the Superintendent of Negro Affairs for the Department of Tennessee; there he supervised the establishment of 74 schools. In 1863, he was made colonel of the Sixty-third Regiment of Colored Infantry, and, in 1865, he was advanced to brevet brigadier general.
He edited the Memphis Post in 1866-1867. He was appointed United States Commissioner of Education in 1870 and served with great efficiency in the Bureau of Education. Commissioner Eaton also reorganized the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.
In 1886-1891, he was president of Marietta College, and, in 1895, he was appointed president of Sheldon Jackson College in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1898, he became inspector of education in Puerto Rico and played a role in the centralization of its educational system. His educational writings dealt largely with the education of freedmen. He wrote a history of Thetford Academy.
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- This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.
