30 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



• 



"The historian of nine years a^o told you of fonr deaths that had occurred; 

 the historian of six years aijo made record of no more; nor did the historian 

 of the last reunion have other names to add. Those four were all : Dickey 

 and Bjnham, who died in the army, and Hardy and Gunn, who died early in 

 the days of this our brotherliood. The wing of the death -angel left thus 

 but few pages of our earlier histories darkened with the black margin. For 

 eight yeais prior to the last meeting there came nodeath message to our num- 

 bers. To-day I must open a sadder chapter. Our death roll numbers four- 

 teen now. Ten deaths have darkened our portals since we met, and the 

 shadows from the cypresses fall on fair names endeared to us by fondest associ- 

 ation. 



"The historian feels justly privileged, at the expense of possible tedium, to 

 dwell upon these young lives — so early ended — with such detail consideration 

 as from the meagre data furnished him he is enabled to. 



"Scarcely had we reached our homes after the last reunion, when the first of 

 this long roll of those departed was called to meet a tragic death at the hands 

 of pitiless murderers on the distant, sun-parched plains of Colorado. 



"George W. Eaton^, of the class of 1869, was killed by the Ute Indians at 

 White Iliver Agency, Colorado, on somewhere about the 29th of September, 

 1879. 



"Eaton was born at Ridgway, Lenawee county, in this State, June 16, 1845. 

 He entered this college with the class of 1869, and he is remembered kindly 

 by his classmates as a hard-working and faithful student — not over brilliant 

 it may be, but one of those fellows who may be depended on, — a quality bet- 

 ter than brilliancy. On the 28th of April, 1870, a few mouths after gradu- 

 ating, he started for Colorado as a member of the famous 'Union Colony,' 

 which founded the now prosperous and beautiful town of Greeley in that 

 State. He remained there engaged for the most part in farming until Sep- 

 tember, 1879, when he was engaged by Indian Agent Meeker to go to the 

 White Iliver Agency to assist him in teaching the Indians how to cultivate the 

 soil. The Indians rebelled against this idea, and without further well-known 

 cause arose in force and massacred the members of the agency with, it is be- 

 lieved, but one exception. The bodies of those murdered were stripped but 

 not treated to further indignities. Eaton's body was found by the soldiers of 

 General Merritt's command near the agency on the 11th of October. It was 

 denuded of all clothing and held in its hand a package of dispatches. A bul- 

 let had pierced the left breast. This massacre is regarded as one of the most 

 cruel and uncalled for of any in the history of our treatment of the Indians. 

 No punishment has ever been meted out to the Indians for this crime. Poor 

 Eaton's body lies buried near the spot where it was found. 



"On the 3d of February, following, Dalston P. Strange, of the class of 

 1871, died at the home of his childhood, in Oneida, in this State. He was 

 born Oct, 1, 1850, and entered this institution in 1866. Those who remem- 

 ber him in his College days can but cherish pleasantest memories of his kind- 

 ness and gentility, his good will and his warm heart. Gentle as a woman, he 

 was faithful to a lofty view of life. He graduated with the class of 187i, and 

 in the same year, when only twenty-one years of age, was appointed Pro- 

 fessor of Agriculture in the University of Minnesota. He remained two 

 years in this jjosition, after which he went to the Boston Institute of Tech- 

 nology to pursue his studies in his chosen specialty — chemical physics. He 

 later developed a proficiency in this line which presaged well of future useful- 

 ness. Failing health compelled him to relinquish his studies in the following 



