By Peter F. Stevens

Ebenezer Eaton &emdash; the name alone sounds like it leaped from the pages of Charles Dickens. The truth is that the great novelist might have been hard-pressed to invent the Meeting House Hill man, for Captain Ebenezer Eaton certainly qualified as one of Dorchester's most unforgettable characters during his long lifetime, from 1787 to 1874. In an old photo, his craggy, white-haired visage hints at a grizzled man who could erupt in a burst of curses and epithets at any instant. Ebenezer Eaton often did just that &emdash; to the amusement of some neighbors and the ire of others with tender ears.

Eaton was born on June 8, 1787, in a home on what would become Eaton Square, the son of Percival Eaton, the owner of a popular grocery and general store, as well as Eaton Tavern. From the Revolution to the Civil War, the Eatons also "entertained parties in a hall in the house," which would be dubbed Eaton Hall.

Locals bestowed the title "Captain" upon Ebenezer Eaton for his service in the town's militia, the term everyone knew him by until his death. After he married the widow Mrs. Mary Withington, a daughter of Thomas Mosely, the couple lived in the old Eaton home.

Ebenezer Eaton not only owned and ran Eaton Hall, where everything from dances and Fourth of July parties to meetings of the local Union Lodge of Masons brought virtually everyone in town through his doors, but also served both his community and the state in a variety of public offices. At the Custom House, he worked as an inspector for years, until a change in the state's administration led to his ouster for being in the wrong political party. Ebenezer Eaton's party? Dorchester historian William Dana Orcutt notes: "In politics Captain Eaton was a Democrat....Although Dorchester was always a strong Republican town, he was never defeated at the polls." Eaton's popularity, his politics notwithstanding, led to his election as Dorchester's representative in the Legislature and as a town selectman of the "old board" with E.H.R. Ruggles and Lewis F. Pierce, and to plaudits for his role in helping to run the town's affairs "with prudence and discretion."

In punctuating his strong views with strong language, Eaton often showed less prudence than that with which he approached a ledger book or his work as a local auctioneer and appraiser. Most locals dismissed or ignored his outbursts of profanity as a tolerable "peculiarity." However, a particular deacon of the First Parish Church took umbrage at Eaton's colorful vernacular shortly after Eaton had been elected by a resounding margin to the Legislature.

The upstanding deacon approached Eaton and said: "Now, Captain Eaton, I voted for you, and respect you as a man and a neighbor, and as you are to represent the town in the Legislature, I want to ask you one favor; that is, that you stop swearing."

Sizing up his critic, Eaton retorted, "Damn it! My swearing is like your praying &emdash; neither of us means anything by it."

Orcutt allows that "Captain Eaton was a blunt, plain, outspoken man." But the historian also points out that Eaton's stellar qualities as a citizen, a neighbor, and a public servant far outweighed his salty speech. "He was one of remarkably good judgement and unquestioned integrity. He was a man of strong prejudices, but had a warm heart and was always ready to help the poor and unfortunate. He had no children, but always took a fatherly interest in his nephews."

For decades, Ebenezer Eaton's Hall proved a social and commercial center for the community. In front of his store in 1834, Dorchester's first line of omnibuses (large, horse-drawn passenger carriages) to convey local businessmen to Boston departed and returned several times daily at a price of 25 cents a ticket. Captain Godspeed, the commander of Dorchester's artillery company, had run a coach back and forth to Boston from Eaton's Meeting House Hill store a few years earlier. Passengers would wait inside Eaton's or gather under the large old elm in front of his "hall."

Passengers and passersby streaming into the tavern and store to purchase food, drink, and other groceries and "sundries" made it easy for the sometimes profane proprietor to kill two proverbial commercial birds with one stone &emdash; he could carry out the day's cash take to deposit it at one of his other business concerns, the Dorchester Savings Bank, where he served as one of the institution's trustees.

Ebenezer Eaton's life and career spanned the era of Dorchester's transition from farms and bucolic estates, to a thriving mill and commercial town, and to an annexed section of Boston just a few years before his death. Throughout his life, he was "part and parcel" of what William Dana Orcutt commemorated as "Good Old Dorchester."

On August 26, 1874, Captain Ebenzer Eaton died at the age of 87. Fittingly, he was laid to rest in the Old Burying Ground, at Upham's Corner. Eaton, a crusty Yankee to his dying day, represented a Dorchester that bloomed in the early days of the American Republic and came of age in the ensuing eras of the Industrial Revolution and the Civil War. In many ways, he had seen it all. A certain deacon of the First Parish Church might have added, "And Captain Eaton said it all."

(Journalist Peter F. Stevens is the author of The Rogue's March: John Riley and the St. Patrick's Battalion, 1846-48, Brassey's, and Notorious and Notable New Englanders, Down East Books.)