John Henry Eaton was born to John and Elizabeth Eaton on June 18, 1790, in Scotland Neck, North Carolina. At the time, Eaton’s father was a furniture maker, the county coroner, and a representative in the North Carolina state assembly, and was listed as a property owner and an enslaver of twelve people.

Eaton attended the University of North Carolina from 1802-1804, then went on to study law. After admittance to the bar, he moved to Franklin, Tennessee to set up practice. There he met his first wife, Myra Lewis, daughter of wealthy landowner and businessman William Terrell Lewis. After her father’s death, Myra and her sister had become wards of Andrew Jackson, and Eaton therefore came into both money and political connections when the two married in 1813. Myra died June 5, 1815.

Over the next few years, Eaton served as an aide to Jackson in the Tennessee militia, including through the War of 1812, remaining on his staff until he became a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, serving from 1815-1816. During this time, he completed and published a biography of Andrew Jackson begun by John Reid, a Jackson aide who died after completing only four chapters. The book was popular enough to go through four editions and served to further Eaton’s name in public and political circles. In 1818, Eaton was appointed Senator in Tennessee after George W. Campbell resigned, though at 28 he did not meet the age requirement of 30 years old set out in the U.S. Constitution. He remains the youngest U.S. Senator on record, and served until 1829, when newly elected President Jackson selected him as Secretary of War in his cabinet, though he resigned two years later due to what became known as “The Petticoat Affair”.

In 1829, John Eaton married widow Margaret “Peggy” (O’Neill) Timberlake. Eaton had been friends with Peggy, daughter of an innkeeper, and her husband John, a Navy purser known to drink heavily, since 1818. He had tried to help with John Timberlake’s numerous debts, finally securing him a Navy posting with the Mediterranean Squadron, which fought piracy in the Mediterranean Sea. Timberlake died at sea of pulmonary disease in April 1828, and Eaton and Peggy married only nine months later, setting a series of rumors in motion that only seemed to grow worse as the Eatons and their friends sought to put them to rest. The wives of many leading Washington political figures shunned the Eatons, socially and politically, and their husbands declined to intervene. President Jackson stood by the Eatons, reminded of the scandal that had swirled around his own marriage, which involved his wife Rachel’s inadvertent bigamy. The situation came to a head in 1831 when Secretary of State Martin Van Buren, a supporter of the Eatons, offered to resign. Jackson took the opportunity to request more resignations from his cabinet, and in the end, Eaton and all other cabinet members except for the Postmaster General had resigned.

After this resignation and an unsuccessful bid to regain a Senate seat, Eaton was appointed the governor of the Territory of Florida in 1834 but was replaced in 1836 when he was appointed Ambassador of Spain. The Eatons returned to Washington in 1840, where John resumed practicing law, and the couple spent their summers in Franklin, Tennessee. Eaton had no children with either of his wives, though Peggy had two daughters from her first marriage. John Henry Eaton died in Washington, D.C. on November 17, 1856.