John Eaton & Powder House Rock

 

So let me see if I got this straight.

 

John Eaton, who came from a long line of John Eatons, and produced a long line of John Eatons, went insane. He was the one who had has affairs taken away from him so that he wouldn’t do anything irresponsible with the farm, the homestead, the family inheritance. His wife Alice was highly thought of. When she went to the local community, they supported her in taking away his rights.

 

This was in the town of Dedham, Mass., and it was in the late 1600’s or early 1700’s like the witch trials in nearby Salem and Boston. The case of this John Eaton is sometimes used to prove that the mentally ill in early Puritan New England were not always treated as witches, or isolated by the community, or ganged up upon.

 

But it’s not exactly clear what did happen to him. His son William seems to have gotten most of the estate. There was a place at Purgatory Point (?) a ways outside of Dedham where I believe they lived. Actually this one author believes this; I have no idea. There was also the original estate that was on the cliffs above downtown Dedham, on the Charles, where Powder House Rock now sits in a patch of woods with a beautiful view.

 

There is some interest in how this land, with Powder House and Powder House Rock, got into the hands of Robert Fuller or the Fuller family, which apparently built the Powder House in 1766. But that connection is fairly easy. William’s daughter Sarah married Robert Fuller.

 

Now there are some complications which I will get into. One is that Sarah’s father John had a father Nicholas, not a whole lot of Johns. So I’m not quite convinced that this Sarah is descended from the man who went insane in the early 1700’s. There were a number of John Eatons around.

 

The land was actually transferred from William Eaton to one Aaron Fuller, who they suspect was living there, as opposed to the Eatons; the Eatons were apparently already out at Purgatory. To the author of the book, John Eaton Alden, the mystery is why the land would be transferred to Aaron Fuller and so soon after, used by the city for a Powder House. The city apparently felt that having a powder house up on the ridge over the Charles and over Dedham itself, was a necessary defensive tactic in the runup to the war itself. Keep in mind that by 1766 Boston was already occupied by the British.

 

Captain Robert Fuller, who it is said built the Powder House, was a soldier in the Revolution (it has been said; I think he was too early). It was his son William who was on the Lexington Alarm Rolls and who therefore was a first responder to the revolution itself. There is a story here, obviously. Captain Robert I think had been a soldier in some previous war. And it could have been Captain Robert who had, as a soldier in the French & Indian War, got Fuller Hill in Maine, part of Livermore Falls which was once called Port Royal (Maine), as a reward for his service.

 

This stuff is real; it’s too wild to make up.

 

Now here’s the thing. The John Eaton who went insane, they don’t know when he died, or how. Somehow William Eaton just got his farm. And the Johns in the picture – there were actually several – don’t seem to have been around when this happened. William was the responsible son who watched the estate, who, along with his mother Alice, made amends after John Eaton went on his rages. But William did not necessarily want the Purgatory place OR the Powder House Rock. If the Fullers and the city wanted it, maybe that was ok with him.

 

Not sure how this all panned out, but I’m sure it’s a story.