94 NEBRASKA ORNITHOLOGISTS' UNION 



IN jNIEMOETAM— MARTIN LUTHEE EATON 



R. H. WOLCOTT, LINCOLN 



One of the duties of a society is to pei'petuate the memoi-y of those 

 Avho have labored to advance the cause the furtherance of which is the 

 aim Oi; the society, and it is in fulfilment of that duty that this biog- 

 raphy is written. And no one will regret more than the writer that 

 its. preparation has been the lot of one who did not enjoy the personal 

 acquaintance of him to whom these pages are dedicated. 



^lartin Luther Eaton was born at Salem, Washtenaw county, Michi- 

 gan, November 14, 1S47. His father, Eev. C. H. Eaton, was a native of 

 Vermont, and a Congregational minister, who moved to Viola, Illinois, 

 in 1861, where the boyhood of Martin was passed. In 1875 he taught a 

 country school near Ne'sv Boston, Illinois, and later another school in 

 Iowa, while at the same time preparing for college. He entered the 

 preparatory department of Tabor College, Iowa, in 1876, and in the fall 

 of 1878 became a student in Iowa College, Grinnell, Iowa. From this 

 college he was graduated in .Time, 1882, with the degree of A. B., and 

 entered the following fall the Medical Department of the University 

 of JNIichigan at Ann Arbor, from which institution he received his de- 

 gree of M. D. in June, 1885, graduating as president of his class. The 

 following year he spent with the family, who were then living in Ar- 

 kansas, and on the death of his mother in May, 1886, he went to Fair- 

 bury, Nebraska, and engaged in the practice of medicine. In Aiigust of 

 this year he was married and his wife and son, who survive him, are at 

 present living in Lincoln, Nebraska. His death occurred at Fairbury, 

 February 12, 1894, at the age of thirty-six years and three months. 



As a j)hysician Dr. Eaton was possessed of a degree of skill which 

 promised to bring him fame in his chosen x^rofession. He was promi- 

 nent in business, political, and social circles, and served one term as 

 mayor of the city of Fairbury. He also served as staff officer in the war 

 of the Ghost Dance in the Bad Lands in 1890 and 1891. He was of an 

 intenselj^ nervous temperament, a deep student, and possessed of high 

 aspirations. Always modest and unassuming, he was possessed of great 

 energy, and did his work with the utmost system and thoroughness. 

 As a child he was inquisitive, and early develoiied a taste for natural 

 history, beginning at first to collect moths, bugs, and butterflies. Later 

 he turned to taxidermy, and devoted himself especially to the collecting 

 of birds, of which he gathered many in Michigan, in Arkansas, during 

 his year of residence and the winter vacation of the year preceding, and 

 later, in Nebi-aska, while engaged in the practice of his profession. He 

 also turned his attention to geology, the study of which he prosecuted 

 with his usual energy. While at Fairbury he suffered the loss of his 

 collections by fire, but a collection of birds and Indian relics at present 

 deposited in the University of Nebraska, and a similar collection which 



