Charles Eaton and Cyrus Eaton: Mentorship and Parallel Lives by Cathy Eaton
October 26, 2017:
[The following sources have been used extensively in this article.]
Charles Aubrey Eaton and Cyrus Stephen Eaton:
Shared Childhoods, Educational Paths, Mentors, and Values
Charles Aubrey Eaton, the tenth and final child of Stephen (a Baptist minister) and Mary Desiah (Parker) Eaton, was born in Pugwash, Nova Scotia in Cumberland County on March 29, 1868. Cyrus Stephen Eaton, the fifth out of nine children of Joseph Howe and Mary Adelia (MacPherson) Eaton, was born in Pugwash River, Nova Scotia on December 28, 1883. Three of Joseph Howe and Charles Aubrey Eaton’s siblings died in infancy. Charles was the youngest brother of Joseph Howe and only fifteen years older than Cyrus, who was the eldest surviving sibling in his family. Charles and his nephew Cyrus were more like brothers than uncle and nephew.
From growing up in rural Pugwash, Nova Scotia on farms with Baptist roots, to following similar educational path, being mentored by John D. Rockefeller and becoming US citizens, to working (albeit in different fields) toward bettering humanity, and finally to focusing energy on peace activism and the improving the lives of others, these two men led parallel lives. Cyrus followed in his Uncle Charley’s footsteps and was encouraged and nurtured by him. Their dynamic careers were tempered by their common choice to settle on cattle farms that nourished their souls and by their passion for learning that energized their spirits.
Their Shared Ancestry (NEED TO WRITE)
Childhoods on Pugwash Farms:Work Expectations Being Integral to Family Life
Daily life on their farms was filled from morning to evening with chores. As a child Charles was puny and endeavored to strengthen his body by working hard on the farm. Cyrus was sturdier and had more time to develop his athletic prowess. Although Charles’ family was less prosperous than Cyrus’ family and struggled more, both Eatons remembered happy childhoods.
Charles recalled, “I cannot recall an unhappy day in all those golden years of childhood. In those primitive days it was taken for granted that everyone would pull its own weight in the family boat, and in our family at least everyone did. I do not remember when or how I learned to milk a cow, or harness a horse, or yoke and drive a pair of oxen, or swing a scythe or axe, or tow and sail a boat, or plant, cultivate, and harvest the various farm crops” (Rev. J. Ronald Miller, 1993, from Prophet in the House: A Biography of Charles Aubrey Eaton, 4).
Cyrus, as a child, also worked on the farm, which likewise gave him contentment and taught him responsibility.
Cyrus recounted, “I grew up on a farm in Pugwash, Nova Scotia. My father was quite successful, and it was not necessary for me to do any chores. I was fascinated by the operation of the farm, and by the time I was six I was begging him to let me milk a cow. My father didn’t think too much of the idea, but he decided to give me a chance. He made me responsible for Bess, the easiest milker on the farm. I became quite attached to Bess” (Fred Knelman, 1962, The Boy from Pugwash).
“Always an early riser, [Cyrus] was the first to discover one spring morning that Bess was missing. Running back to the house from the barn, he met his father and John who joined in the search for Bess. As the day wore on, neighbours searched as well, but when night fell, Bess was still missing. Up early after a sleepless night, Cyrus set off in the dawn in a different direction through the woods and finally found the cow, with new-born twin calves, resting beside a bed of mayflower” (Margaret Eaton, “Cyrus Eaton as a Lad,” Unpublished Biography).
“I was immensely proud of my achievement. I have since imported bluebloods from Scotland, but I will never see as fine a cow as old Bess appeared to me in those long-ago days. It is all because of the fact that Bess was my first property, my first responsibility.” (Knelman).
“Some months later, at harvest, [his mother] Mary was preparing to make biscuits to feed the threshing crew, when she ran out of flour. Joseph was too busy to take the grain to nearby Conns Mills to have it ground and John was now in school, so the horse and wagon were hitched up for four-year-old Cyrus, while his mother stood by protesting that he was much too young. ‘Now, think about it,’ Joseph argued, ‘the road is straight. Even if Cy doesn’t know the way, the horse does.’ So with the encouragement of his father, Cy set out, holding tightly to the reins, and returned triumphantly with the flour ready for biscuits” (Margaret Eaton).
His endeavors didn’t always meet with success as one day he tipped over the wagon when maneuvering a tight corner.
In a 1950 article Cyrus said, “If a youngster is trained or has opportunity to work in the present society, he is going to be willing to preserve that society” (Knelman, “Boy from Pugwash). One can conjecture that Cyrus and Charles’ hard work as boys on the farms led them to strive to fight for the survival of society and the right of all men to earth a livelihood in peaceful circumstances. Cyrus said, “There seems to be nothing that can surpass the satisfaction that comes from creating something.”
Joseph Howe Eaton described his son in a news article as reserved and not one to mingle with others. Dr. G. W. O’Brien, a contemporary of Cyrus and a doctor, described young Cyrus. “I’ll never forget the first day he came into the schoolroom at Pugwash. He had the bluest eyes, the fairest hair and the pinkest cheeks you ever saw, and he was the envy of all the ladies and a perfect little gentleman.”
Joseph Howe and Mary Adelia moved their family to Pugwash Junction where Stephen and Mary’s family lived. According to long-time resident Violet Williams, at one point Cyrus Eaton lived in the same house as Charlie Eaton, and their beloved teacher Margaret King boarded with them. Joseph Howe, in addition to farming, running a general store and the post office, owned timber acres in the Canadian Northwest. The diversity of his work interests helped sustain the family when severe weather conditions caused crop failures and losses.
Diphtheria and Tragedy
Diphtheria struck both Charles and Cyrus’s families. After Charles’s brother’s young son died of diphtheria, John injured himself in a weightlifting contest, started hemorrhaging, and died. Charles, devastated that his hero had died, had listened to his father praying by his brother’s bedside. Always eager to help family, young Charles fetched his brother’s widow and daughter Anne to return to the family homestead to live with them (Miller).
Amos Eaton, Cyrus Eaton’s great ? grandfather, was a Baptist Minister in Pugwash. At the church where he preached, four of Cyrus’ elder siblings are buried with one headstone. They died of diphtheria over a period of ten years. Mary Adelia’s deep religious Baptist faith must have been the support that helped her endure these heartbreaking losses.
Cyrus, like Charles, suffered the loss of a beloved sibling. “Shortly after Cyrus began school in September, of 1889, his older brother John, now eight and a half, became desperately ill. When the teacher discovered his high fever, she sent him home in the early afternoon, with Cyrus accompanying him. Their mother, Mary, having lost her three oldest children to the devastating disease, recognized the symptoms of diphtheria and tucked him into bed. Hoping to keep Cyrus safe from contagion, she sent her young son outside. Waiting until she returned inside, “he crept up to the house, where standing on tiptoe, his nose resting on the window ledge, he watched as his mother, now expecting her eighth child, bent anxiously over John as he lay on a couch in the kitchen. She bathed his burning face with cool water and placed a bread poultice on his throat and chest. On the evening of the fourth day, when his father came to tell him that John had died, Cyrus ran away into the woods with his dog, where he remained for hours, trying to make sense of what had happened. It seemed that his playmate John had “gone to bed and he never got up again.” It was a confusing and bewildering time for a child not yet six” (Margaret Eaton).
Early Education and Passion for Reading
It was after a devastating fire burned their home to the ground, Steven and Mary moved to Pugwash Junction where Charles attended the village school. As a youngster, he had the ability to remember whenever he is read; however, one day he refused to recite a passage and was so severely beaten that he was diagnosed with brain damage. After the fever broke, he no longer had ability to remember everything he had read, but he never lost his desire to devour books and be a life-long learning. Like Cyrus, he loved books and read prodigiously. (Miller).
As a young teen, Charles moved to Truro to attend a superior school. Here, he discovered a bookstore that captured his heart, so he convinced the bookstore proprietor to let him study in a secluded corner. Both Charles and his nephew Cyrus devoured books in a multitude of fields.
Was it their bright minds eager to sponge up learning, was it the dynamic teaching of their teacher Margaret King, was it the long evenings without television or electricity, or the guidance of their family that led Charles and Cyrus to be avid readers and excel at school?
“A bright curious child, [Cyrus] loved to learn. At home, his mother, a friend of Margaret King, reinforced her teaching, encouraging Cyrus to read and study the Bible. His father, later the postmaster, also provided him with reading material, perhaps unintentionally, for as Cyrus was sorting the newspapers form Boston, Providence and Halifax, he was also reading them. “By the time I was ten, I was pretty well experienced in business and world affairs – my father was postmaster and I used to read all the newspapers that came in to subscribers.” (Margaret Eaton 11). “He also acted as Sunday School librarian at the local Baptist church, an important source of reading material, since there was not a public library at that time in Pugwash.”
According to the Star Weekly Magazine, Dec 7, 1957, “When Eaton was a boy in Pugwash…he learned to know the great books. ‘To read them was the only way to put in the long winter evenings pleasantly,” he recalls today. His father was a combined merchant, farmer, and lumberman, and the Eatons were relatively well-to-do. But on both sides of his family there were ‘preachers, poets and professors’” (“Cyrus Eaton and the Pugwash Thinkers).
“At the closing ceremonies in June at [Amherst Academy], Cyrus was called to the stage to be presented with sets of the complete works of Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley, along with framed photographs of the authors, for leading his class in science.”
The photographs of Darwin and Huxley resided in Cyrus’ Acadia Farms Home during Cyrus’ lifetime and now are on the wall of his room at Thinker’s Lodge.
Margaret Eaton conjectures that “Possibly Darwin’s theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest influenced his later business life and decisions; certainly it, and Huxley’s theory of agnosticism forced him to reconsider his orthodox, fundamentalist Christian beliefs, as he spent part of the summer reading the volumes and pondering these new and radical ideas. Sensing that he was moving away from traditional religious beliefs, his mother told him that after she died, she would contact him from Heaven to prove that an afterlife existed.”
Years later, Anne Eaton (Cyrus’ second wife) describes her husband’s library and reading habits.
“The library was the heart of the Eaton house at Acadia Farms, between Cleveland and Akron. It was large, paneled, with a fireplace, a worn leather couch and Morris chair among comfortable, slip covered furniture. Philosophy, science, and history dominated. Shakespeare was in recessed shelves over the fireplace, and Leslie Stephen, Hazlitt, Saint Beuve and assorted essayists behind glass doors in an antique secretary. Plato and Aristotle were relegated to a small, book-lined hall to the living room, alongside Standard and Poor, Moody's, the 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and a complete set of George Eliot. Books were everywhere in the house (most with white paper markers sticking out of their tops” (Anne Eaton in introduction to Unpublished Biography of Cyrus Eaton).
“On the library walls were photo portraits of the men he called his intellectual ancestors: Darwin, Huxley, Hume, Spinoza, Epictetus, Erasmus. Mill, William James (there was a complete set of Henry James in the living room), Herbert Spencer, and John Morley. He didn't have likenesses of Marcus Aurelius or Milton. In the living room, within reach of an easy chair by the fireplace, a complete set of the complete works of the British poets filled a shelf and a half. There was, inevitably, a first edition set of Kipling in another of the four living room bookcases. But the two volumes permanently in his bedroom were the Oxford Book of English Verse and ???????????” (Anne Eaton)
The love of reading, which his mother and teacher Margaret King encouraged, remained with him throughout his life. When he was ninety, he was re-reading Spinoza, claiming it made him “feel young again.”
“Everyday I read some poetry. I read a little every night before I turn off my light,” he said in later years, citing as favorites Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Arnold Bennett, Thomas Grey, and particularly Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ and Milton’s sonnet on his blindness. “You know, nothing contributes more to one’s happiness in life than reading the great poetry that very often expresses the happiest and best moments in the life of the poet who wrote it.” (Margaret Eaton 19)
At the end of his life when Cyrus was 95 years old, his ability to speak and his short-term memory were failing, but he could still recite poems from memory: poems that had nourished his heart and lively intellect.
“Reading matter which came in and out of the house on a daily basis was the London Times, New York Times, Toronto Globe, Chicago Tribute, Wall Street Journal and the Cleveland and Akron Papers, Time, and Newsweek slid in and out, with Fortune and Forbes. Often the Manchester Guardian came from the office, and the occasional Le Monde. Cyrus said he learned to scan newspapers when he was an overnight guest of Herbert Hoover at the White House. In the elevator as they descended for breakfast was a sampling of the nation's newspapers for the President's perusal. By the time the elevator stopped he had read the headlines, noted lead stories, and read the editorial headlines in all of them. Cyrus started his newspaper habit when he helped his father, the postmaster at Pugwash Junction: he read all the newspapers that came on the mail train, no matter where they came from” (Anne Eaton, intro to bio).
Work Responsibilities and Work Ethic:
As a young man, Charles Eaton returned one spring to help on the farm after his father’s shipbuilding business failed. When Steven departed for Colorado to work in the mines for two years, Charles continued his schooling while running the farm. (Miller) It is likely Steven joined his brother Cyrus Black Eaton, who moved to Denver, Colorado. Joseph Howe and Mary Adelia also considered moving to Colorado after the deaths of their first four children but ultimately decided not to go.
Charles’ nephew, Cyrus, was never idle and believed it to be his obligation to pay for his education. He worked at a Berk’s Department Store while attending MacMaster University, worked for John D. Rockefeller in the summers, and worked on a ranch in Western Canada when he graduated college.
Both Charles and Cyrus maintained a life-long bond with their agricultural roots. Charles discovered a spiritual connection with the land. “When school began in the fall, the hours lengthened as the chores had to be accomplished before and after school. Accepting the tedious routine, Charlie nevertheless basked in the work of the soil” (Miller 9).
“Everything we did on the farm was tied up someway near a remote with the good Earth. Under those conditions a boy is bound to acquire a tang of the soil. I did not know it then, but during those long and lonely but never lonesome days, my nature was being saturated with the sense of oneness with mother Earth” (Miller 9).
Both Charles and Cyrus found sanctuary living on land. As an adult, Charles lived on a dairy farm while he worked as a minister in New York City and later while he was a Congressman from New Jersey, while Cyrus found joy and solace at his short horn cattle farm while he worked as an industrialist in Cleveland, Ohio.
Soon after Stephen Eaton returned from mining in Colorado, he suffered a massive stroke and was an invalid for the rest of his life. As head of household since his older siblings were no longer at home, Charles hired several men to help them. Having the responsibility of managing a farm increased his confidence just as managing a country store, working in the post office, and helping with the family farm built Cyrus’s confidence. (Miller)
One day, Charles’s self-confidence was sorely tested when he discovered his father unconscious, his mother desperately ill, and his young niece suffering from a terrible ear infection. At first he panicked but then resolved to “win this fight, come hell or high water” (Miller 11). He was able to heat up the freezing house, put goose grease in Annie’s ears, hot cloth to relieve his mother’s pain, and still get all the chores done: feeding the horses, milking the cows, and tending the rest of the livestock.
He recalled, he had “tapped the immeasurable reserve of moral energy, that potent stimulus of the will-to-win which lies hidden deep in the spirit of every normal man. I am convinced that ignorance of or disbelief in existence of the spiritual reserves explains most of the tragic and unnecessary failures in life” (Miller 12).
To supplement their family income, fifteen-year-old Charley found work with the construction crew building a branch of the railroad with a route off the main line through Pugwash. Charley figured out a way to save the workers time by attaching multiple carts together that were piled high with the trees that the construction workers had chopped down. He earned $.25 per cart and felt like a capitalist. Quickly, he was promoted to be in charge of the entire dumping procedure and brought home a much-needed $20 per week to his mother. (Miller)
Cyrus, like Charles, tackled many different jobs. Following his beloved brother’s death, Cyrus was now the oldest living Eaton child and only boy, a responsibility he embraced.
“Customers in Joseph Eaton’s general store were often waited upon by the extraordinarily mature six-year-old son of the proprietor, who weighed out flour, sugar and raisins, and counted change with solemnity. His father used to say proudly, “When Cyrus was six, I could leave him in the store for hours alone and he never failed my confidence. His qualifications for big business are brains and absolute trustworthiness” (MacKenzie Porter, “The Boy Who Listened to Rockefeller,” Maclean’s, May 1, 1953)
Cyrus lost interest in the store in the spring of 1890 when he became fascinated observing dozens of railroad workers laying track right through the Eaton property.
“’They were building a spur line from the main line into Pugwash, which it was hoped would return prosperity to the town. When the railway decided to put tracks through our place, somebody had to be hired to carry water from a spring to where the men were working with their picks and shovels. I wanted the job and I got it! I was paid fifty cents for a ten-hour day,’ he re-called. When the railroad opened officially on July 2, 1890 and the first steam engine rattled over the newly laid track, Cyrus stood watching with his father, proud that he had had a part in it.” (Margaret Eaton).
Although Joseph Eaton was wealthier and more financially stable than his brother Stephen, Cyrus felt compelled to support himself to attend college although his father offered to pay his tuition. Cyrus believed his father’s money should be saved to pay for the schooling of his four younger siblings.
Pursuing Higher Education and Public Speaking
After his father died, Charlie aspired to attend Acadia College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Because all his work on the farm had put him behind academically, he determined to attend Amherst Academy thirty miles from home to bolster his academic preparations. He took one small trunk with him.
“It was not an impressive and elaborate inventory. My school books, the New Testament, a clean shirt or two, a pair of overalls. After paying my fare from Thompsons Station at Amherst, I had a $.25 piece left as my entire monetary capital. Measured by modern standards, I was traveling light” (Miller 17).
He found a job at a nearby farmhouse that provided room and board, allowing him to attend school in the fall. When he took the exam to get into Amherst Academy, he scored higher than all the rest of the applicants. During the school year, he first worked at the shoe factory and then found a job doing clerical work. (Miller).
Cyrus, encouraged by Charles, followed his educational footsteps.
“Cy may have been too young to play baseball with adults in 1897, but by 1899, he had progressed as far as he could at the one-room school, where under Miss King’s tutelage he had studied Latin, some trigonometry and even navigation. A family conference, which included his parents; his uncle, Rev. Charles Aubrey Eaton, an Acadia University graduate and Baptist minister; and another uncle, Frederick Eaton from Amherst, N.S., resulted in an invitation for Cyrus to live with Frederick’s family and attend Amherst Academy for the year 1899-1900. In the spring, he wrote the provincial junior matriculation examination, achieving high marks in all subjects.” (Margaret Eaton).
Also an athlete, he excelled in rugby, baseball, and ice hockey.
Years before Cyrus arrived in Amherst, Charles gave up his room for some Baptist delegates in town for a conference. Charles’ landlord was so impressed by Charles’ generosity of spirit that he provided a complete scholarship for Charley to attend Acadia for four years. Arthur Dickey, later Attorney General of Canada, offered Charley work as a clerk in a law office for 25 cents an hour. Charley’s diligence paid off and brought him other clerical work allowing the luxury of buying new clothes and rent a house where he brought his mother and young niece Annie to live with him in town. He began leaning toward the profession of law. (Miller)
Cyrus and Charles both considered a variety of careers while they diligently tackled their studies.
A life in the ministry had not occurred to Charles despite regularly attending the Baptist Church and Sunday school in his childhood. His father had held long walks and talks with God; reading from the Bible on Sunday was a regular ritual. However, after attending a service at a local Presbyterian Church, he felt compelled to visit Dr. David Allan Steele, who had been a source of sustenance to his father during his invalid years. Thus began a religious awakening, the path to baptism, and the decision to join the Amherst Baptist Church. He became the Sunday school teacher for a group of boisterous pre-teens and caught their admiration through his story-telling and valiant rescue of a stolen pigeon. Dr. Steele’s open heart to church-goers and non church-goers appealed to Charles (Miller). For the rest of his life as minister and Congressman, he himself would reach out to people in need whether they were members of his congregation or lived on the streets, whether they were Americans or residents from war-torn nations.
By the time Charles began courses at Acadia University in Wolfville, located in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, his calling to be a minister seemed clear. His strong academic preparation in Latin, Greek, math, theology, science, history, psychology, and philosophy had prepared him well for university. He thorough enjoyed discussions and public speaking. Although he landed a job preaching for $1.20 at a small local church, his first preaching job was short lived due to lack of material. As a senior, he co-edited the college newspaper, which prepared to also be a news editor while employed as a minister.
Cyrus also was drawn to debating, public speaking, and was leaning to a career in the ministry. Cyrus explained, “During my four years at McMaster University I attended meetings of the Ontario Legislature as often as I could to listen to the debates. I have known personally every Prime Minister of the Federal Government from Sir Charles Tupper to Mackenzie King” (Knelman). Portraits of the prime ministers that Cyrus met and corresponded with now line the walls of one of the stairwells at Thinkers Lodge. The final prime minister he claimed as a friend was Pierre Trudeau, the father of the current prime minister, Justin Trudeau. Both Charles and Cyrus courted relationships with political powers.
Path to Baptist Ministry
After graduating from Acadia University in Wolfville in 1890 with high honors, Charles enrolled in the Andover Newton Theological Seminary in Massachusetts and became minister for the First Baptist Church in Natick, Massachusetts. His outreach to the community, his rugged good looks, and his congeniality soon filled the pews with attentive parishioners (Miller).
While he began courting the lovely young Mary Winifred Parlin, his mentor, Dr. Lorimer, nourished his oratory and dramatic skills. After a brisk wind sucked his notes out a church window, he found he didn’t need to rely on notes to speak. Upon his return from a tour of great cathedrals in England, Charles was recruited to move to Toronto to become the minister at the Bloor Street Baptist Church (Miller).
In 1895, Charley began inspiring his congregation to serve the needy and poor both locally and in foreign missions. This recognition of the need to reach out around the world to peoples in need eventually led to his beliefs in inclusionism when he was a New Jersey Congressman and his fierce fight against isolationism. The impetus for his signing of the UN Charter in 1945 may have been motivated by his continual reaching out to the needy community people he was so astutely aware of. He had high hopes that the United Nations signaled a higher order of governing. (Miller).
He was a pastor from 1892/3-1895 in Natick, MA, 1895-1901 in Boor Street, Toronto, Canada, and 1901-1909 in Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, before becoming pastor of Madison Avenue Church in New York City from 1909-1919. He was very spiritual, a clear forceful speaker, and always involved with helping the community people in need.
“Dr. Eaton believed that God was moving the world into a neighborhood of peace and justice. As a pastor and national leader, he asserted this belief in the inclusive love of God, which included all the world’s peoples. His signing of the Charter of the United Nations on behalf of the United States was a witness to this creed” (J. Ronald Miller, Prophet in the House, preface).
A local newspaper described Charles Eaton’s energizing preaching from the pulpit.
“He is a striking man to look at, with a face singularly attractive. He has dark, deep blue eyes, raven black hair and a black mustache. His features are aglow with expression the whole of the time he is speaking, and his voice is vibrant and telling” (Miller).
Cyrus’ physical looks and personality did not resemble Charles. A college classmate, Lillian Senior
“retained fond memories of Cyrus. Seventy-one years after their graduation in 1905, she wrote to the CBC after viewing their documentary about him and said: “Cyrus Eaton was a person of infinite gentleness, of quiet self-effacement and of perfect manners” (Margaret Eaton).
Cyrus, although more reserved than his story-telling, master orator Uncles Charles, was able to speak compellingly to college educators, scientists, and scholars throughout his live.
“The activity Cyrus most enjoyed was debating. At McMaster, students took intercollegiate debates seriously and a debate against rival Osgood Hall was thought to afford a prime evening’s entertainment. ‘In my spare time, I occasionally took advantage of the proximity of Queen’s Park to sit in on sessions of the legislature. Local celebrities included George Ross who rose to be premier of Ontario. The skill with which Ross embellished his speeches with quotations from Shakespeare earned my admiration. I tried some speaking on my own and considered that I had reached a pinnacle in being asked to address a crowded Massey Hall audience one Sunday afternoon’ (21 Margaret Eaton).
“To help put myself through college, I had a part time job in the advertising department of Ryrias, now Birks, and it was there that I learned what an important adjunct the newspaper is to successful merchandising.” Cyrus made a habit of reading the financial sections of the papers. “From that time to this, Canadian newspapers have come daily to my desk, and continuous reading of them, and especially their splendid financial pages, has been of great value” (Margaret Eaton)
Charles and Cyrus had a common work ethic.
“The McMaster University Monthly summarized Cyrus’ academic career by calling him “versatile” and “one of the prominent lights of the class, having many talents and good qualities” (22) not the least of which was the pride he took in working hard to achieve his goals. Whether it was milking a cow in the years before he went to school, making high marks, paying his own way though university or sharpening his wits in a heated formal debate, he tackled the job with a purposeful, whole-hearted determination. That characteristic was just born in him, he once commented, as he always wanted to be doing some work that was useful and constructive (Margaret Eaton).
In 1899, when Charley was 31, he collected a series of messages based on Bible passages that he had published weekly in pamphlets for his Toronto parishioners. In one pamphlet, he wrote,
“Christians ought to touch the world directly – we ought to mingle with men just as they are and thrust our influence upon them. We are to storm directly the fortress of sin and wrong. …We must not allow society to set us to one side, ‘Stay there apart by yourselves—sing your songs and pray, but do not touch us.’ Rather let us proclaim our message everywhere and carry the cross of Christ to the very center of the life about us” (Miller 35).
This ideology lead Reverend Eaton and Reverend A.J. Vining to help establish the First Congress of the National Baptist convention in Binnepeg a year later. Their mission was to nurture opportunities to connect Christianity to social problems in the communities and in the world. (Miller)
“The plight of the poor and other pressing problems had to be approached from a national perspective” (Miller 36).
After being elected secretary of the convention by its 250 participants, Charles Eaton delivered the closing address.
“No longer can any nation live unto itself…We rise and fall together.” [Miller develops his book Prophet in the House on the premise that] “the essence of this message was to be the trumpet call of not only of nearly twenty years to follow in the ministry, but also of the nearly thirty years to come on the floor of the House of Representatives, as Eaton echoed that cry” (Miller 35).
Charles Eaton continued to pursue education as he finished his M.A. from McMaster University in 1896, and later was awarded an honorary degree, Doctorate of Divinity, from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and eventually from his Acadia University.
Cyrus’ Career Choices (Electrical, Law, or Ministry)
Cyrus, like his Uncle Charles was bright, motivated, and ambitions. Both considered a variety of careers.
“Cyrus, encouraged by his mother and Uncle Charles, now minister at the Bloor Street Baptist Church in Toronto, was giving serious consideration to studying for the ministry, although he was intrigued by the new field of electrical engineering. After another family conference with Uncle Charles, it was decided that both Cyrus and his cousin, George Johnson (his father’s sister Caroline’s son from Truro), would attend Woodstock College, a Baptist affiliated preparatory school in Toronto, for one year, to complete high school.” (Margaret Eaton).
“While most of the students at Woodstock had been there for three years and therefore knew each other, they soon opened their ranks to the new arrivals. “Cy”, as his classmates called him, and George tried out for the rugby team, were accepted, and played to a victorious finish, while Cy played baseball as well. He was invited to join the senior literary and debating society, where his talents as a public speaker, “his easy manner and musical voice” (17) soon dispelled any doubts which the Ontarians may have had about the tall young man from Nova Scotia. He continued to do well academically and was described as a “bright and painstaking student” (18), now thinking about a law career, instead of the church” (Margaret Eaton).
“In September 1901, Cyrus and George enrolled at McMaster University, situated on an acre of land on Bloor Street. This Baptist institution had been founded in 1887 by Senator William McMaster, merchant and founder of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. The Chancellor, Alexander McKay, son of a carpenter from Nova Scotia, was a brilliant mathematics and physics professor. Charles had recently earned a Master’s degree in theology from this university, and inspired by his example, Cyrus turned his attention to theology, literature and philosophy, with the goal, once again, of entering the ministry. His philosophy professor, Douglas MacIntosh considered him to be “the most brilliant philosophical mind" in any of his classes, where he once achieved the almost unheard-of mark of 99.” (Margaret Eaton).
“Meanwhile, some professors at McMaster were among the pioneers in the newer fields of the social gospel and higher Biblical criticism and accused by some leading Toronto Baptists of outright heresy, by freely interpreting the Bible and rejecting its “literal truth”. A compromise was reached after a three year controversy, which undoubtedly had an effect on Cyrus, for he found himself again questioning the simple, unwavering faith his mother had found to be so comforting and which she had tried her best to instill in him.” (Margaret Eaton)
US Citizenship, John D. Rockefeller, Work Ethic, and Marriage
In 1895 Charles Aubrey Eaton became a citizen of the United States when he was 27 years old. Eighteen years later, in 1913, Cyrus Stephen Eaton became a naturalized citizen of the United States when he was 29. Charles and his wife had six children while Cyrus and his first wife Margaret had seven children. John D. Rockefeller played pivotal roles in the lives of each man’s career
After Rev Eaton began ministering at the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, and became a close friend of John E. Rockefeller, a prominent member of the congregation, he urged him to understand that “they [the wealthy] were stewards, not owners, of their wealth which was to be used for the benefit of mankind” (Miller 41). He inspired Rockefeller to begin on his path of “philanthropic” endeavors, founding the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, which evolved into the Rockefeller Foundation University, promoting “education in the United States without distinction to race or creed” (40). Twelve years later Rockefeller established the Rockefeller foundation.
Seventeen-year-old Cyrus Eaton, after coming to spend the summer with Uncle Charles, was hired by Rockefeller to be his secretary, golf caddy, and general problem solver.
In 1973 Cyrus recalled,
“It was my good luck to get a job with Mr. Rockefeller at forest hill during my summer vacations from school and college in 1901, 1902 1903. My duties were many and varied, indoors and outdoors.” (?)
“I became an errand boy, luggage carrier, messenger when Mr. Rockefeller was playing golf, sometimes with Uncle Charlie in the foursome, and the one who shinnied up the flag pole on the top of the three-story house when the rope was tangled” (Anne Eaton).
“As messenger, clerk, and junior aide, I served a business apprenticeship that has stood me in good stead throughout my life. I was lucky to be able to share in the special intellectual stimulus that came from the frequent visits of President Harper (President of Chicago University) My eagerness to work and willingness to put in nights, Sundays and holidays, obviously met with Mr. Rockefeller’s approval, for he finally offered me a permanent position after I finished college. He gave me his blessing when I chose to go my own way and, during the remaining years of the Rockefellers in Cleveland, I was not infrequently included in their luncheons, dinners, and picnics.” (Cyrus Eaton, “Rockefeller and Harper: Recollections and Reflections”)
Cyrus also acted as a trusted body guard “because I was a sturdy youth who had demonstrated my physical courage in Mr. Rockefeller’s presence. I was delegated to sit near him in church, on the alert for intruders.”
Eaton recalled in The American Magazine, December 1950,
“Every summer on the day school closed, I would board a train for Cleveland and report for work the next morning. I remained at work until the day before school reopened. I did this for four years. …Cleveland was Mr. Rockefeller’s summer headquarters, and I had an opportunity to everything from running errands to helping entertain guests. Often I was present when important guest discussed finance and industry. I learned much from them, and this experience, of course, was largely responsible for shaping my career. More important to me at the time than my connection with Mr. Rockefeller, however, was the fact that when I got my college diploma, I had not only paid my way, but had money in the bank.”
After college, Cyrus spent the summer working on a ranch in Western Canada as a broncobuster. Additionally, he became the weekly mailman after hours. From his childhood until in 90s, Cyrus always loved horseback riding.
“I had sufficient money to pay my expenses to and from a ranch in western Canada, where I spent five happy months of rest and recreation as a cowboy. During those months I learned the true joy of outdoors, and from those strong courageous cowhands, who were my companions, I came to realize fully that the full measure of a man is now what he has, but what he is. These men enjoyed their work, and in the quiet and stillness of the great open spaces had found satisfaction.” (The American Magazine, Dec 1950)
Conclusion to this first essay
Charles Aubrey Eaton was Cyrus Stephen Eaton’s beloved uncle, friend, and mentor. The roots of two men in rural Pugwash, their committed work ethics, their shared Baptist heritage, the guidance and encouragement they received from educators and family, their ability to find sanctuary in the land, and their passion to use their intellect and ambition to improve the lot of humanity took these two from a small Canadian village to a Global Community.
- Prophet in the House: A Biography of Charles Aubrey Eaton By J Ronald Miller, 1993, Community Church Press, Chicago, Illinois – Have contacted author
- The Boy From Pugwash: A Biography of Cyrus Stephen Eaton by Fred Knelman, 1962 (unpublished biography) Permission from Fred Knelman’s wife
- Introduction to Reflection on Cyrus Eaton by Anne Eaton (unpublished) – permission from Lissy Gulick
- “Cyrus Eaton as a Lad” by Margaret Eaton – Need Permission. Hoping to find out what sources Margaret used.
- “Cyrus Eaton and the Pugwash Thinkers,” Star Weekly Magazine, Dec 7, 1957
- “The Boy Who Listened to Rockefeller” by MacKenzie Porter, Maclean’s, May 1, 1953)
- “Rockefeller and Harper: Recollections and Reflections” by Cyrus Eaton, July 11, 1973 (Address before the Canadian Club)
- (The American Magazine, Dec 1950) Working on locating.
- The Eaton Family of Nova Scotia by Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton
Charles Aubrey Eaton and Cyrus Stephen Eaton:
Shared Childhoods, Educational Paths, Mentors, and Values
Charles Aubrey Eaton, the tenth and final child of Stephen (a Baptist minister) and Mary Desiah (Parker) Eaton, was born in Pugwash, Nova Scotia in Cumberland County on March 29, 1868. Cyrus Stephen Eaton, the fifth out of nine children of Joseph Howe and Mary Adelia (MacPherson) Eaton, was born in Pugwash River, Nova Scotia on December 28, 1883. Three of Joseph Howe and Charles Aubrey Eaton’s siblings died in infancy. Charles was the youngest brother of Joseph Howe and only fifteen years older than Cyrus, who was the eldest surviving sibling in his family. Charles and his nephew Cyrus were more like brothers than uncle and nephew.
From growing up in rural Pugwash, Nova Scotia on farms with Baptist roots, to following similar educational path, being mentored by John D. Rockefeller and becoming US citizens, to working (albeit in different fields) toward bettering humanity, and finally to focusing energy on peace activism and the improving the lives of others, these two men led parallel lives. Cyrus followed in his Uncle Charley’s footsteps and was encouraged and nurtured by him. Their dynamic careers were tempered by their common choice to settle on cattle farms that nourished their souls and by their passion for learning that energized their spirits.
Their Shared Ancestry (NEED TO WRITE)
Childhoods on Pugwash Farms:Work Expectations Being Integral to Family Life
Daily life on their farms was filled from morning to evening with chores. As a child Charles was puny and endeavored to strengthen his body by working hard on the farm. Cyrus was sturdier and had more time to develop his athletic prowess. Although Charles’ family was less prosperous than Cyrus’ family and struggled more, both Eatons remembered happy childhoods.
Charles recalled, “I cannot recall an unhappy day in all those golden years of childhood. In those primitive days it was taken for granted that everyone would pull its own weight in the family boat, and in our family at least everyone did. I do not remember when or how I learned to milk a cow, or harness a horse, or yoke and drive a pair of oxen, or swing a scythe or axe, or tow and sail a boat, or plant, cultivate, and harvest the various farm crops” (Rev. J. Ronald Miller, 1993, from Prophet in the House: A Biography of Charles Aubrey Eaton, 4).
Cyrus, as a child, also worked on the farm, which likewise gave him contentment and taught him responsibility.
Cyrus recounted, “I grew up on a farm in Pugwash, Nova Scotia. My father was quite successful, and it was not necessary for me to do any chores. I was fascinated by the operation of the farm, and by the time I was six I was begging him to let me milk a cow. My father didn’t think too much of the idea, but he decided to give me a chance. He made me responsible for Bess, the easiest milker on the farm. I became quite attached to Bess” (Fred Knelman, 1962, The Boy from Pugwash).
“Always an early riser, [Cyrus] was the first to discover one spring morning that Bess was missing. Running back to the house from the barn, he met his father and John who joined in the search for Bess. As the day wore on, neighbours searched as well, but when night fell, Bess was still missing. Up early after a sleepless night, Cyrus set off in the dawn in a different direction through the woods and finally found the cow, with new-born twin calves, resting beside a bed of mayflower” (Margaret Eaton, “Cyrus Eaton as a Lad,” Unpublished Biography).
“I was immensely proud of my achievement. I have since imported bluebloods from Scotland, but I will never see as fine a cow as old Bess appeared to me in those long-ago days. It is all because of the fact that Bess was my first property, my first responsibility.” (Knelman).
“Some months later, at harvest, [his mother] Mary was preparing to make biscuits to feed the threshing crew, when she ran out of flour. Joseph was too busy to take the grain to nearby Conns Mills to have it ground and John was now in school, so the horse and wagon were hitched up for four-year-old Cyrus, while his mother stood by protesting that he was much too young. ‘Now, think about it,’ Joseph argued, ‘the road is straight. Even if Cy doesn’t know the way, the horse does.’ So with the encouragement of his father, Cy set out, holding tightly to the reins, and returned triumphantly with the flour ready for biscuits” (Margaret Eaton).
His endeavors didn’t always meet with success as one day he tipped over the wagon when maneuvering a tight corner.
In a 1950 article Cyrus said, “If a youngster is trained or has opportunity to work in the present society, he is going to be willing to preserve that society” (Knelman, “Boy from Pugwash). One can conjecture that Cyrus and Charles’ hard work as boys on the farms led them to strive to fight for the survival of society and the right of all men to earth a livelihood in peaceful circumstances. Cyrus said, “There seems to be nothing that can surpass the satisfaction that comes from creating something.”
Joseph Howe Eaton described his son in a news article as reserved and not one to mingle with others. Dr. G. W. O’Brien, a contemporary of Cyrus and a doctor, described young Cyrus. “I’ll never forget the first day he came into the schoolroom at Pugwash. He had the bluest eyes, the fairest hair and the pinkest cheeks you ever saw, and he was the envy of all the ladies and a perfect little gentleman.”
Joseph Howe and Mary Adelia moved their family to Pugwash Junction where Stephen and Mary’s family lived. According to long-time resident Violet Williams, at one point Cyrus Eaton lived in the same house as Charlie Eaton, and their beloved teacher Margaret King boarded with them. Joseph Howe, in addition to farming, running a general store and the post office, owned timber acres in the Canadian Northwest. The diversity of his work interests helped sustain the family when severe weather conditions caused crop failures and losses.
Diphtheria and Tragedy
Diphtheria struck both Charles and Cyrus’s families. After Charles’s brother’s young son died of diphtheria, John injured himself in a weightlifting contest, started hemorrhaging, and died. Charles, devastated that his hero had died, had listened to his father praying by his brother’s bedside. Always eager to help family, young Charles fetched his brother’s widow and daughter Anne to return to the family homestead to live with them (Miller).
Amos Eaton, Cyrus Eaton’s great ? grandfather, was a Baptist Minister in Pugwash. At the church where he preached, four of Cyrus’ elder siblings are buried with one headstone. They died of diphtheria over a period of ten years. Mary Adelia’s deep religious Baptist faith must have been the support that helped her endure these heartbreaking losses.
- Frank Parker Eaton (b. December 27, 1871) died at five on February 15, 1877.
- The first daughter, Gertrude (Gurtie) May Eaton, (born June 16, 1873) died at 3 on February 23, 1877, 8 days after her brother.
- The third child, Frank Eaton (born April 2, 1877 -- two months after the brother for whom he was named) died on March 1, 1880, a month after his third birthday.
- The fourth child, John Wilbur, was born March 19, 1881 and died September 1889.
Cyrus, like Charles, suffered the loss of a beloved sibling. “Shortly after Cyrus began school in September, of 1889, his older brother John, now eight and a half, became desperately ill. When the teacher discovered his high fever, she sent him home in the early afternoon, with Cyrus accompanying him. Their mother, Mary, having lost her three oldest children to the devastating disease, recognized the symptoms of diphtheria and tucked him into bed. Hoping to keep Cyrus safe from contagion, she sent her young son outside. Waiting until she returned inside, “he crept up to the house, where standing on tiptoe, his nose resting on the window ledge, he watched as his mother, now expecting her eighth child, bent anxiously over John as he lay on a couch in the kitchen. She bathed his burning face with cool water and placed a bread poultice on his throat and chest. On the evening of the fourth day, when his father came to tell him that John had died, Cyrus ran away into the woods with his dog, where he remained for hours, trying to make sense of what had happened. It seemed that his playmate John had “gone to bed and he never got up again.” It was a confusing and bewildering time for a child not yet six” (Margaret Eaton).
Early Education and Passion for Reading
It was after a devastating fire burned their home to the ground, Steven and Mary moved to Pugwash Junction where Charles attended the village school. As a youngster, he had the ability to remember whenever he is read; however, one day he refused to recite a passage and was so severely beaten that he was diagnosed with brain damage. After the fever broke, he no longer had ability to remember everything he had read, but he never lost his desire to devour books and be a life-long learning. Like Cyrus, he loved books and read prodigiously. (Miller).
As a young teen, Charles moved to Truro to attend a superior school. Here, he discovered a bookstore that captured his heart, so he convinced the bookstore proprietor to let him study in a secluded corner. Both Charles and his nephew Cyrus devoured books in a multitude of fields.
Was it their bright minds eager to sponge up learning, was it the dynamic teaching of their teacher Margaret King, was it the long evenings without television or electricity, or the guidance of their family that led Charles and Cyrus to be avid readers and excel at school?
“A bright curious child, [Cyrus] loved to learn. At home, his mother, a friend of Margaret King, reinforced her teaching, encouraging Cyrus to read and study the Bible. His father, later the postmaster, also provided him with reading material, perhaps unintentionally, for as Cyrus was sorting the newspapers form Boston, Providence and Halifax, he was also reading them. “By the time I was ten, I was pretty well experienced in business and world affairs – my father was postmaster and I used to read all the newspapers that came in to subscribers.” (Margaret Eaton 11). “He also acted as Sunday School librarian at the local Baptist church, an important source of reading material, since there was not a public library at that time in Pugwash.”
According to the Star Weekly Magazine, Dec 7, 1957, “When Eaton was a boy in Pugwash…he learned to know the great books. ‘To read them was the only way to put in the long winter evenings pleasantly,” he recalls today. His father was a combined merchant, farmer, and lumberman, and the Eatons were relatively well-to-do. But on both sides of his family there were ‘preachers, poets and professors’” (“Cyrus Eaton and the Pugwash Thinkers).
“At the closing ceremonies in June at [Amherst Academy], Cyrus was called to the stage to be presented with sets of the complete works of Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley, along with framed photographs of the authors, for leading his class in science.”
The photographs of Darwin and Huxley resided in Cyrus’ Acadia Farms Home during Cyrus’ lifetime and now are on the wall of his room at Thinker’s Lodge.
Margaret Eaton conjectures that “Possibly Darwin’s theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest influenced his later business life and decisions; certainly it, and Huxley’s theory of agnosticism forced him to reconsider his orthodox, fundamentalist Christian beliefs, as he spent part of the summer reading the volumes and pondering these new and radical ideas. Sensing that he was moving away from traditional religious beliefs, his mother told him that after she died, she would contact him from Heaven to prove that an afterlife existed.”
Years later, Anne Eaton (Cyrus’ second wife) describes her husband’s library and reading habits.
“The library was the heart of the Eaton house at Acadia Farms, between Cleveland and Akron. It was large, paneled, with a fireplace, a worn leather couch and Morris chair among comfortable, slip covered furniture. Philosophy, science, and history dominated. Shakespeare was in recessed shelves over the fireplace, and Leslie Stephen, Hazlitt, Saint Beuve and assorted essayists behind glass doors in an antique secretary. Plato and Aristotle were relegated to a small, book-lined hall to the living room, alongside Standard and Poor, Moody's, the 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and a complete set of George Eliot. Books were everywhere in the house (most with white paper markers sticking out of their tops” (Anne Eaton in introduction to Unpublished Biography of Cyrus Eaton).
“On the library walls were photo portraits of the men he called his intellectual ancestors: Darwin, Huxley, Hume, Spinoza, Epictetus, Erasmus. Mill, William James (there was a complete set of Henry James in the living room), Herbert Spencer, and John Morley. He didn't have likenesses of Marcus Aurelius or Milton. In the living room, within reach of an easy chair by the fireplace, a complete set of the complete works of the British poets filled a shelf and a half. There was, inevitably, a first edition set of Kipling in another of the four living room bookcases. But the two volumes permanently in his bedroom were the Oxford Book of English Verse and ???????????” (Anne Eaton)
The love of reading, which his mother and teacher Margaret King encouraged, remained with him throughout his life. When he was ninety, he was re-reading Spinoza, claiming it made him “feel young again.”
“Everyday I read some poetry. I read a little every night before I turn off my light,” he said in later years, citing as favorites Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Arnold Bennett, Thomas Grey, and particularly Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ and Milton’s sonnet on his blindness. “You know, nothing contributes more to one’s happiness in life than reading the great poetry that very often expresses the happiest and best moments in the life of the poet who wrote it.” (Margaret Eaton 19)
At the end of his life when Cyrus was 95 years old, his ability to speak and his short-term memory were failing, but he could still recite poems from memory: poems that had nourished his heart and lively intellect.
“Reading matter which came in and out of the house on a daily basis was the London Times, New York Times, Toronto Globe, Chicago Tribute, Wall Street Journal and the Cleveland and Akron Papers, Time, and Newsweek slid in and out, with Fortune and Forbes. Often the Manchester Guardian came from the office, and the occasional Le Monde. Cyrus said he learned to scan newspapers when he was an overnight guest of Herbert Hoover at the White House. In the elevator as they descended for breakfast was a sampling of the nation's newspapers for the President's perusal. By the time the elevator stopped he had read the headlines, noted lead stories, and read the editorial headlines in all of them. Cyrus started his newspaper habit when he helped his father, the postmaster at Pugwash Junction: he read all the newspapers that came on the mail train, no matter where they came from” (Anne Eaton, intro to bio).
Work Responsibilities and Work Ethic:
As a young man, Charles Eaton returned one spring to help on the farm after his father’s shipbuilding business failed. When Steven departed for Colorado to work in the mines for two years, Charles continued his schooling while running the farm. (Miller) It is likely Steven joined his brother Cyrus Black Eaton, who moved to Denver, Colorado. Joseph Howe and Mary Adelia also considered moving to Colorado after the deaths of their first four children but ultimately decided not to go.
Charles’ nephew, Cyrus, was never idle and believed it to be his obligation to pay for his education. He worked at a Berk’s Department Store while attending MacMaster University, worked for John D. Rockefeller in the summers, and worked on a ranch in Western Canada when he graduated college.
Both Charles and Cyrus maintained a life-long bond with their agricultural roots. Charles discovered a spiritual connection with the land. “When school began in the fall, the hours lengthened as the chores had to be accomplished before and after school. Accepting the tedious routine, Charlie nevertheless basked in the work of the soil” (Miller 9).
“Everything we did on the farm was tied up someway near a remote with the good Earth. Under those conditions a boy is bound to acquire a tang of the soil. I did not know it then, but during those long and lonely but never lonesome days, my nature was being saturated with the sense of oneness with mother Earth” (Miller 9).
Both Charles and Cyrus found sanctuary living on land. As an adult, Charles lived on a dairy farm while he worked as a minister in New York City and later while he was a Congressman from New Jersey, while Cyrus found joy and solace at his short horn cattle farm while he worked as an industrialist in Cleveland, Ohio.
Soon after Stephen Eaton returned from mining in Colorado, he suffered a massive stroke and was an invalid for the rest of his life. As head of household since his older siblings were no longer at home, Charles hired several men to help them. Having the responsibility of managing a farm increased his confidence just as managing a country store, working in the post office, and helping with the family farm built Cyrus’s confidence. (Miller)
One day, Charles’s self-confidence was sorely tested when he discovered his father unconscious, his mother desperately ill, and his young niece suffering from a terrible ear infection. At first he panicked but then resolved to “win this fight, come hell or high water” (Miller 11). He was able to heat up the freezing house, put goose grease in Annie’s ears, hot cloth to relieve his mother’s pain, and still get all the chores done: feeding the horses, milking the cows, and tending the rest of the livestock.
He recalled, he had “tapped the immeasurable reserve of moral energy, that potent stimulus of the will-to-win which lies hidden deep in the spirit of every normal man. I am convinced that ignorance of or disbelief in existence of the spiritual reserves explains most of the tragic and unnecessary failures in life” (Miller 12).
To supplement their family income, fifteen-year-old Charley found work with the construction crew building a branch of the railroad with a route off the main line through Pugwash. Charley figured out a way to save the workers time by attaching multiple carts together that were piled high with the trees that the construction workers had chopped down. He earned $.25 per cart and felt like a capitalist. Quickly, he was promoted to be in charge of the entire dumping procedure and brought home a much-needed $20 per week to his mother. (Miller)
Cyrus, like Charles, tackled many different jobs. Following his beloved brother’s death, Cyrus was now the oldest living Eaton child and only boy, a responsibility he embraced.
“Customers in Joseph Eaton’s general store were often waited upon by the extraordinarily mature six-year-old son of the proprietor, who weighed out flour, sugar and raisins, and counted change with solemnity. His father used to say proudly, “When Cyrus was six, I could leave him in the store for hours alone and he never failed my confidence. His qualifications for big business are brains and absolute trustworthiness” (MacKenzie Porter, “The Boy Who Listened to Rockefeller,” Maclean’s, May 1, 1953)
Cyrus lost interest in the store in the spring of 1890 when he became fascinated observing dozens of railroad workers laying track right through the Eaton property.
“’They were building a spur line from the main line into Pugwash, which it was hoped would return prosperity to the town. When the railway decided to put tracks through our place, somebody had to be hired to carry water from a spring to where the men were working with their picks and shovels. I wanted the job and I got it! I was paid fifty cents for a ten-hour day,’ he re-called. When the railroad opened officially on July 2, 1890 and the first steam engine rattled over the newly laid track, Cyrus stood watching with his father, proud that he had had a part in it.” (Margaret Eaton).
Although Joseph Eaton was wealthier and more financially stable than his brother Stephen, Cyrus felt compelled to support himself to attend college although his father offered to pay his tuition. Cyrus believed his father’s money should be saved to pay for the schooling of his four younger siblings.
Pursuing Higher Education and Public Speaking
After his father died, Charlie aspired to attend Acadia College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Because all his work on the farm had put him behind academically, he determined to attend Amherst Academy thirty miles from home to bolster his academic preparations. He took one small trunk with him.
“It was not an impressive and elaborate inventory. My school books, the New Testament, a clean shirt or two, a pair of overalls. After paying my fare from Thompsons Station at Amherst, I had a $.25 piece left as my entire monetary capital. Measured by modern standards, I was traveling light” (Miller 17).
He found a job at a nearby farmhouse that provided room and board, allowing him to attend school in the fall. When he took the exam to get into Amherst Academy, he scored higher than all the rest of the applicants. During the school year, he first worked at the shoe factory and then found a job doing clerical work. (Miller).
Cyrus, encouraged by Charles, followed his educational footsteps.
“Cy may have been too young to play baseball with adults in 1897, but by 1899, he had progressed as far as he could at the one-room school, where under Miss King’s tutelage he had studied Latin, some trigonometry and even navigation. A family conference, which included his parents; his uncle, Rev. Charles Aubrey Eaton, an Acadia University graduate and Baptist minister; and another uncle, Frederick Eaton from Amherst, N.S., resulted in an invitation for Cyrus to live with Frederick’s family and attend Amherst Academy for the year 1899-1900. In the spring, he wrote the provincial junior matriculation examination, achieving high marks in all subjects.” (Margaret Eaton).
Also an athlete, he excelled in rugby, baseball, and ice hockey.
Years before Cyrus arrived in Amherst, Charles gave up his room for some Baptist delegates in town for a conference. Charles’ landlord was so impressed by Charles’ generosity of spirit that he provided a complete scholarship for Charley to attend Acadia for four years. Arthur Dickey, later Attorney General of Canada, offered Charley work as a clerk in a law office for 25 cents an hour. Charley’s diligence paid off and brought him other clerical work allowing the luxury of buying new clothes and rent a house where he brought his mother and young niece Annie to live with him in town. He began leaning toward the profession of law. (Miller)
Cyrus and Charles both considered a variety of careers while they diligently tackled their studies.
A life in the ministry had not occurred to Charles despite regularly attending the Baptist Church and Sunday school in his childhood. His father had held long walks and talks with God; reading from the Bible on Sunday was a regular ritual. However, after attending a service at a local Presbyterian Church, he felt compelled to visit Dr. David Allan Steele, who had been a source of sustenance to his father during his invalid years. Thus began a religious awakening, the path to baptism, and the decision to join the Amherst Baptist Church. He became the Sunday school teacher for a group of boisterous pre-teens and caught their admiration through his story-telling and valiant rescue of a stolen pigeon. Dr. Steele’s open heart to church-goers and non church-goers appealed to Charles (Miller). For the rest of his life as minister and Congressman, he himself would reach out to people in need whether they were members of his congregation or lived on the streets, whether they were Americans or residents from war-torn nations.
By the time Charles began courses at Acadia University in Wolfville, located in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, his calling to be a minister seemed clear. His strong academic preparation in Latin, Greek, math, theology, science, history, psychology, and philosophy had prepared him well for university. He thorough enjoyed discussions and public speaking. Although he landed a job preaching for $1.20 at a small local church, his first preaching job was short lived due to lack of material. As a senior, he co-edited the college newspaper, which prepared to also be a news editor while employed as a minister.
Cyrus also was drawn to debating, public speaking, and was leaning to a career in the ministry. Cyrus explained, “During my four years at McMaster University I attended meetings of the Ontario Legislature as often as I could to listen to the debates. I have known personally every Prime Minister of the Federal Government from Sir Charles Tupper to Mackenzie King” (Knelman). Portraits of the prime ministers that Cyrus met and corresponded with now line the walls of one of the stairwells at Thinkers Lodge. The final prime minister he claimed as a friend was Pierre Trudeau, the father of the current prime minister, Justin Trudeau. Both Charles and Cyrus courted relationships with political powers.
Path to Baptist Ministry
After graduating from Acadia University in Wolfville in 1890 with high honors, Charles enrolled in the Andover Newton Theological Seminary in Massachusetts and became minister for the First Baptist Church in Natick, Massachusetts. His outreach to the community, his rugged good looks, and his congeniality soon filled the pews with attentive parishioners (Miller).
While he began courting the lovely young Mary Winifred Parlin, his mentor, Dr. Lorimer, nourished his oratory and dramatic skills. After a brisk wind sucked his notes out a church window, he found he didn’t need to rely on notes to speak. Upon his return from a tour of great cathedrals in England, Charles was recruited to move to Toronto to become the minister at the Bloor Street Baptist Church (Miller).
In 1895, Charley began inspiring his congregation to serve the needy and poor both locally and in foreign missions. This recognition of the need to reach out around the world to peoples in need eventually led to his beliefs in inclusionism when he was a New Jersey Congressman and his fierce fight against isolationism. The impetus for his signing of the UN Charter in 1945 may have been motivated by his continual reaching out to the needy community people he was so astutely aware of. He had high hopes that the United Nations signaled a higher order of governing. (Miller).
He was a pastor from 1892/3-1895 in Natick, MA, 1895-1901 in Boor Street, Toronto, Canada, and 1901-1909 in Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, before becoming pastor of Madison Avenue Church in New York City from 1909-1919. He was very spiritual, a clear forceful speaker, and always involved with helping the community people in need.
“Dr. Eaton believed that God was moving the world into a neighborhood of peace and justice. As a pastor and national leader, he asserted this belief in the inclusive love of God, which included all the world’s peoples. His signing of the Charter of the United Nations on behalf of the United States was a witness to this creed” (J. Ronald Miller, Prophet in the House, preface).
A local newspaper described Charles Eaton’s energizing preaching from the pulpit.
“He is a striking man to look at, with a face singularly attractive. He has dark, deep blue eyes, raven black hair and a black mustache. His features are aglow with expression the whole of the time he is speaking, and his voice is vibrant and telling” (Miller).
Cyrus’ physical looks and personality did not resemble Charles. A college classmate, Lillian Senior
“retained fond memories of Cyrus. Seventy-one years after their graduation in 1905, she wrote to the CBC after viewing their documentary about him and said: “Cyrus Eaton was a person of infinite gentleness, of quiet self-effacement and of perfect manners” (Margaret Eaton).
Cyrus, although more reserved than his story-telling, master orator Uncles Charles, was able to speak compellingly to college educators, scientists, and scholars throughout his live.
“The activity Cyrus most enjoyed was debating. At McMaster, students took intercollegiate debates seriously and a debate against rival Osgood Hall was thought to afford a prime evening’s entertainment. ‘In my spare time, I occasionally took advantage of the proximity of Queen’s Park to sit in on sessions of the legislature. Local celebrities included George Ross who rose to be premier of Ontario. The skill with which Ross embellished his speeches with quotations from Shakespeare earned my admiration. I tried some speaking on my own and considered that I had reached a pinnacle in being asked to address a crowded Massey Hall audience one Sunday afternoon’ (21 Margaret Eaton).
“To help put myself through college, I had a part time job in the advertising department of Ryrias, now Birks, and it was there that I learned what an important adjunct the newspaper is to successful merchandising.” Cyrus made a habit of reading the financial sections of the papers. “From that time to this, Canadian newspapers have come daily to my desk, and continuous reading of them, and especially their splendid financial pages, has been of great value” (Margaret Eaton)
Charles and Cyrus had a common work ethic.
“The McMaster University Monthly summarized Cyrus’ academic career by calling him “versatile” and “one of the prominent lights of the class, having many talents and good qualities” (22) not the least of which was the pride he took in working hard to achieve his goals. Whether it was milking a cow in the years before he went to school, making high marks, paying his own way though university or sharpening his wits in a heated formal debate, he tackled the job with a purposeful, whole-hearted determination. That characteristic was just born in him, he once commented, as he always wanted to be doing some work that was useful and constructive (Margaret Eaton).
In 1899, when Charley was 31, he collected a series of messages based on Bible passages that he had published weekly in pamphlets for his Toronto parishioners. In one pamphlet, he wrote,
“Christians ought to touch the world directly – we ought to mingle with men just as they are and thrust our influence upon them. We are to storm directly the fortress of sin and wrong. …We must not allow society to set us to one side, ‘Stay there apart by yourselves—sing your songs and pray, but do not touch us.’ Rather let us proclaim our message everywhere and carry the cross of Christ to the very center of the life about us” (Miller 35).
This ideology lead Reverend Eaton and Reverend A.J. Vining to help establish the First Congress of the National Baptist convention in Binnepeg a year later. Their mission was to nurture opportunities to connect Christianity to social problems in the communities and in the world. (Miller)
“The plight of the poor and other pressing problems had to be approached from a national perspective” (Miller 36).
After being elected secretary of the convention by its 250 participants, Charles Eaton delivered the closing address.
“No longer can any nation live unto itself…We rise and fall together.” [Miller develops his book Prophet in the House on the premise that] “the essence of this message was to be the trumpet call of not only of nearly twenty years to follow in the ministry, but also of the nearly thirty years to come on the floor of the House of Representatives, as Eaton echoed that cry” (Miller 35).
Charles Eaton continued to pursue education as he finished his M.A. from McMaster University in 1896, and later was awarded an honorary degree, Doctorate of Divinity, from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and eventually from his Acadia University.
Cyrus’ Career Choices (Electrical, Law, or Ministry)
Cyrus, like his Uncle Charles was bright, motivated, and ambitions. Both considered a variety of careers.
“Cyrus, encouraged by his mother and Uncle Charles, now minister at the Bloor Street Baptist Church in Toronto, was giving serious consideration to studying for the ministry, although he was intrigued by the new field of electrical engineering. After another family conference with Uncle Charles, it was decided that both Cyrus and his cousin, George Johnson (his father’s sister Caroline’s son from Truro), would attend Woodstock College, a Baptist affiliated preparatory school in Toronto, for one year, to complete high school.” (Margaret Eaton).
“While most of the students at Woodstock had been there for three years and therefore knew each other, they soon opened their ranks to the new arrivals. “Cy”, as his classmates called him, and George tried out for the rugby team, were accepted, and played to a victorious finish, while Cy played baseball as well. He was invited to join the senior literary and debating society, where his talents as a public speaker, “his easy manner and musical voice” (17) soon dispelled any doubts which the Ontarians may have had about the tall young man from Nova Scotia. He continued to do well academically and was described as a “bright and painstaking student” (18), now thinking about a law career, instead of the church” (Margaret Eaton).
“In September 1901, Cyrus and George enrolled at McMaster University, situated on an acre of land on Bloor Street. This Baptist institution had been founded in 1887 by Senator William McMaster, merchant and founder of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. The Chancellor, Alexander McKay, son of a carpenter from Nova Scotia, was a brilliant mathematics and physics professor. Charles had recently earned a Master’s degree in theology from this university, and inspired by his example, Cyrus turned his attention to theology, literature and philosophy, with the goal, once again, of entering the ministry. His philosophy professor, Douglas MacIntosh considered him to be “the most brilliant philosophical mind" in any of his classes, where he once achieved the almost unheard-of mark of 99.” (Margaret Eaton).
“Meanwhile, some professors at McMaster were among the pioneers in the newer fields of the social gospel and higher Biblical criticism and accused by some leading Toronto Baptists of outright heresy, by freely interpreting the Bible and rejecting its “literal truth”. A compromise was reached after a three year controversy, which undoubtedly had an effect on Cyrus, for he found himself again questioning the simple, unwavering faith his mother had found to be so comforting and which she had tried her best to instill in him.” (Margaret Eaton)
US Citizenship, John D. Rockefeller, Work Ethic, and Marriage
In 1895 Charles Aubrey Eaton became a citizen of the United States when he was 27 years old. Eighteen years later, in 1913, Cyrus Stephen Eaton became a naturalized citizen of the United States when he was 29. Charles and his wife had six children while Cyrus and his first wife Margaret had seven children. John D. Rockefeller played pivotal roles in the lives of each man’s career
After Rev Eaton began ministering at the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, and became a close friend of John E. Rockefeller, a prominent member of the congregation, he urged him to understand that “they [the wealthy] were stewards, not owners, of their wealth which was to be used for the benefit of mankind” (Miller 41). He inspired Rockefeller to begin on his path of “philanthropic” endeavors, founding the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, which evolved into the Rockefeller Foundation University, promoting “education in the United States without distinction to race or creed” (40). Twelve years later Rockefeller established the Rockefeller foundation.
Seventeen-year-old Cyrus Eaton, after coming to spend the summer with Uncle Charles, was hired by Rockefeller to be his secretary, golf caddy, and general problem solver.
In 1973 Cyrus recalled,
“It was my good luck to get a job with Mr. Rockefeller at forest hill during my summer vacations from school and college in 1901, 1902 1903. My duties were many and varied, indoors and outdoors.” (?)
“I became an errand boy, luggage carrier, messenger when Mr. Rockefeller was playing golf, sometimes with Uncle Charlie in the foursome, and the one who shinnied up the flag pole on the top of the three-story house when the rope was tangled” (Anne Eaton).
“As messenger, clerk, and junior aide, I served a business apprenticeship that has stood me in good stead throughout my life. I was lucky to be able to share in the special intellectual stimulus that came from the frequent visits of President Harper (President of Chicago University) My eagerness to work and willingness to put in nights, Sundays and holidays, obviously met with Mr. Rockefeller’s approval, for he finally offered me a permanent position after I finished college. He gave me his blessing when I chose to go my own way and, during the remaining years of the Rockefellers in Cleveland, I was not infrequently included in their luncheons, dinners, and picnics.” (Cyrus Eaton, “Rockefeller and Harper: Recollections and Reflections”)
Cyrus also acted as a trusted body guard “because I was a sturdy youth who had demonstrated my physical courage in Mr. Rockefeller’s presence. I was delegated to sit near him in church, on the alert for intruders.”
Eaton recalled in The American Magazine, December 1950,
“Every summer on the day school closed, I would board a train for Cleveland and report for work the next morning. I remained at work until the day before school reopened. I did this for four years. …Cleveland was Mr. Rockefeller’s summer headquarters, and I had an opportunity to everything from running errands to helping entertain guests. Often I was present when important guest discussed finance and industry. I learned much from them, and this experience, of course, was largely responsible for shaping my career. More important to me at the time than my connection with Mr. Rockefeller, however, was the fact that when I got my college diploma, I had not only paid my way, but had money in the bank.”
After college, Cyrus spent the summer working on a ranch in Western Canada as a broncobuster. Additionally, he became the weekly mailman after hours. From his childhood until in 90s, Cyrus always loved horseback riding.
“I had sufficient money to pay my expenses to and from a ranch in western Canada, where I spent five happy months of rest and recreation as a cowboy. During those months I learned the true joy of outdoors, and from those strong courageous cowhands, who were my companions, I came to realize fully that the full measure of a man is now what he has, but what he is. These men enjoyed their work, and in the quiet and stillness of the great open spaces had found satisfaction.” (The American Magazine, Dec 1950)
Conclusion to this first essay
Charles Aubrey Eaton was Cyrus Stephen Eaton’s beloved uncle, friend, and mentor. The roots of two men in rural Pugwash, their committed work ethics, their shared Baptist heritage, the guidance and encouragement they received from educators and family, their ability to find sanctuary in the land, and their passion to use their intellect and ambition to improve the lot of humanity took these two from a small Canadian village to a Global Community.