—WILLIAM EATON TO HIS WIFE, ELIZA
EATON RUSHED HOME from Baltimore to Brimfield, Massachusetts, to deliver news of his mission to his wife and family, and to gather up his swords, knives, pistols, rifles, ammunition, guidebooks, and anything else he might need to help Hamet overthrow Yussef’s government.
Rushing home meant enduring nine days of mishaps and discomforts. Heavy winds almost capsized his sail ferryboat in New York harbor; a snowstorm slogged the stagecoach into traveling three miles per hour instead of the usual breakneck pace of six. Horse-drawn carriages, bumping over rutted roads, jolted their cramped passengers so badly that many travelers complained of a kind of seasickness. Sailboats plying the coast might move a touch faster in the event that wind and current cooperated, which they rarely did.
Forty-year-old William Eaton arrived in Brimfield and delivered his good news to his thirty-seven-year-old wife, apparently with a flourish. (A son, their first after three daughters, would be born nine months later.)
Brimfield was (and still is) a small country hill town, not far from the Connecticut border. (Today it’s known for an enormous outdoor antiques fair.) It was Eaton’s wife and her first husband who had caused all of them to wind up there. Fifty-one-year-old war hero General Timothy Danielson, a wealthy widower from the leading family in town, had chosen for his second wife a local beauty, eighteen-year-old Elizabeth Sykes, known as Eliza. In their six years of marriage, the May-December couple had three children: Timothy, now seventeen; Eli, fifteen; and Sarah, fourteen. The general died, leaving a wealthy widow who one year later in 1792 married Captain William Eaton in nearby union , Connecticut.
Over the previous decade when Eaton had been consul to Tunis, he had written her passionate letters—“It is this invincible pride which has forced me from the bosom of a companion whose bosom is heaven.” “I love you and long to see you.” William and Eliza had three daughters: Eliza, Charlotte, and Almira. He once lovingly referred to their children as “the little pledges of our mutual pleasures.” He also drew close to his stepchildren, asking them to call him “Pa” and to take the middle initial E as a token of their family bond.
William’s frequent absences for career, however, were taking a toll on their marriage. Of their first dozen married years together, Eaton spent no more than a year’s worth of days, snatched here or there, in the family home and conjugal bed. Almost every visit resulted in a pregnancy. Eliza, pregnant, running a household, raising little ones, rarely wrote any letters, which infuriated William. Without letters, he started to worry about his wife’s fidelity. He once sent her a carnelian gemstone ring of a vestal virgin found in the ruins of Carthage. “It has undoubtedly been worn as a seal by some Roman or Carthaginian Lady many hundred years ago,” he wrote. “I beg you to accept it and use it as your seal for the sake of a man who adores you—it is the emblem of Chastity.”
Eaton, now on the first day of this visit home, informed Eliza that he had landed a midshipman’s berth for her son Eli and that the fifteen- year-old would accompany him to the Mediterranean. The boy would travel the world, join the navy as an officer. Eliza was never happy to see any of her children or her husband leave home. His tone didn’t allow for any discussion. He also told her that her son Tim would return to college, and he berated her for wanting to keep their young daughters home instead of sending them off to boarding school.
Eaton—with his hard opinions and passion—had trouble blending gracefully into anything: a family, an army platoon, or someone else’s small town. At many times in his life, he was downright combustible. The shock waves from his explosions could rock anyone back on their heels, whether it be a preacher, a wife, a bashaw, or a president.
William Eaton was born in Woodstock, Connecticut, on February 23, 1764, into the sprawling Eaton clan of New England. Their Puritan roots stopped just shy of the Mayflower. William’s great-great-great-grandfather John had sailed over on the Elizabeth and Ann in 1630, had signed the Dedham Covenant to strictly follow the Bible, and in more mundane matters, he had helped build the first footbridge across the Charles River in Boston. William was the second son in the “be-fruitful-and-multiply” family of thirteen children of Sarah and Nathaniel Eaton. Nathaniel eked out a living by farming the craggy soil and teaching school in their home during the winter months.
A neighbor said William early on showed “intellectual vigor” as well as “eccentricity.” The boy hated farm work, and his father caught him time and again sneaking off to the woods, carrying a hunting rifle and a book. The family moved to Mansfield, Connecticut, when he was ten, and he quickly gained the reputation as the town daredevil. Some family members didn’t expect him to outlive his childhood. After worship one Sunday, he climbed to the top of a cherry tree to halloo the passersby, fell, and was knocked out for three days before waking up with a dislocated shoulder.