Nathaniel Eaton
[11] Nathaniel was baptised in St Mary and All Saints' Church, Great Budworth, Cheshire, where his father was vicar, on 17 September 1609.
[15] In 1637, Eaton emigrated to the New England Colonies on the merchant ship Hector, and arrived in Boston on 26 June 1637 along with a party that included his older brothers, Theophilus and Samuel, and John Davenport.
[7] Around the time that Eaton started teaching at Harvard, the Antinomian Controversy had erupted in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The governor at the time, John Winthrop, was noted for his extreme stance within the Puritan community and was feared by many of the colonists.
They intended to start their own settlement – probably due in part to the commanding persona of John Winthrop, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony at the time (1637 to 1640, and many other terms).
In 1639, the year after Theophilus left, Eaton was brought before a court on allegations that he had beat his assistant Nathaniel Briscoe too harshly.
Eaton ordered others to hold Briscoe in place while he beat him with "200 stripes" using a walnut tree branch that Winthrop describes as "large enough to have killed a horse".
[26] The only record of Eaton's own supposed confession was destroyed in a suspicious fire in the office of the historian James Savage (1784–1873), and the full extent of his guilt remains in doubt.
[citation needed] It is through the court case that we know that Eaton owned a slave referred to as "The Moor", in what is the earliest known record of slavery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In 1640, Eaton moved to the Colony of Virginia, and then sent for his wife and children who left New England, except for his two year old son Benoni.
[34][35] Eaton served for several years as an assistant to the Anglican curate at Accomac, Virginia before returning to England, where he was appointed vicar of Bishop's Castle, Shropshire, in 1661 and rector of Bideford, Devon, in 1668.
The 1640 endowment letter was footnoted in 1647 by Theophilus, who wrote: This money was put wholey into the hands of my brother Nath:Eaton.
His imprisonment coincided with the Stuart Restoration, and was likely reposted on an old list that King Charles II's father had kept concerning those of lingering or questionable indebtedness.
[37] There was also Nathaniel (H)eaton, Heaten, wife, Elizabeth and children, who emigrated on the Griffin[38] with William and Anne Marbury Hutchinson landing on 18 September 1634[39][40] in the town of Boston, but who spelled his name "Heaton".
[43] In The Crooked and Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston – 1630–1822 [note 185] by Annie Haven Thwing, Nathaniel Heaton is accurately cited.
Samuel Eliot Morison Builders of the Bay Colony (1930) pp 190–191 where can be found his wife's supposed confession that was obviously coerced.
