Hezekiah Hurlbut Eaton

1809 – 1832

Transylvania University – Lexington, Kentucky

Hezekiah Hurlbut Eaton was born July 21, 1809 in Catskill, New York. He died at the age of 23 on August 16, 1832 in Lexington, Kentucky.

His father was Prof. Amos Eaton (May 17, 1776-May 10, 1842), a scientist and educator in the Troy, New York area. Professor Eaton, a fellow student of Washington Irving, co-founded The Rensselaer School, now know as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1824. Hezekiah received his Bachelor of Arts Degree from the Rensselaer School in 1826.

Hezekiah, a scholar of great promise, was an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Transylvania University, a liberal arts college in Lexington, Kentucky. It is to be noted that three of Professor Eaton’s sons, who were educated by their father to follow him in the walks of science, died young.

In a Biographical Memoir by Charles Wilkins Short (1794-1863) delivered in a introductory address to the medical class at Transylvania University on November 10, 1832, Short mentions that Hezekiah was “arrested in his labors by a hemorrhage from the lungs”

Note 2: Death notice for Eaton was published in The Troy Daily Whig on July 24, 1834.