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S.W. Eaton

S.W. Eaton

Federal (USV)

Chaplain

Samuel Witt Eaton

(1820 - 1905)

Home State: Wisconsin

Education: Yale College (1842);
Union Seminary, Yale Seminary, Andover Seminary (1842-46);
Beloit College (DD, 1888)

Command Billet: Regimental Chaplain

Branch of Service: Chaplain

Unit: 7th Wisconsin Infantry

Before Antietam

He was licensed to preach in 1844, went west to Lancaster in Grant County, WI in 1846, and was ordained there in 1848. He returned east for rest in 1857, traveled in Europe for about a year, then returned to his work in Wisconsin. He was appointed and mustered as Chaplain of the 7th Wisconsin Infantry on 2 July 1862.

On the Campaign

He was with his regiment on South Mountain on 14 September and at Antietam on 17 September 1862.

The rest of the War

He continued with the regiment through the war and mustered out with them on 3 July 1865.

After the War

He returned to his pastorate at Lancaster, WI and completed 40 years of service there in 1886, moving on to a church in Roscoe, IL. After another 16 years service there he resigned his pastorate, then age 82, and in 1903 moved to Beloit, WI and lived with his son, Edward, then President of Beloit College. He died at the home of another son, Samuel, in Newton Highlands, MA at the age of 84 in 1905.

References & notes

His service basics from the State of Wisconsin.1 Personal details and his presence on the Maryland Campaign from his bio sketch in Yale University's Obituary Records of Graduates (1905), online from the Connecticut General Assembly. His gravesite is on Findagrave, source also of his picture, from a photograph of unknown provenance contributed by user motherboy1.

He married Catharine Elizabeth Demarest (1824-1904) in May 1847 and they had 4 sons.

Birth

11/25/1820; Framingham, MA

Death

02/09/1905; Newton, MA; burial in Hillside Cemetery, Lancaster, WI

Notes

1   State of Wisconsin, Adjutant General's Office, and Chandler P. Chapman, Adj. Gen., Roster of Wisconsin Volunteers, War of the Rebellion, 1861-1865, 2 volumes, Madison: Democrat Printing Co., State Printers, 1886, Vol. 1, p. 539  [AotW citation 31228]