Amos Eaton (1776-1842) was born in Chatham New York.. His father, Captain Abel Eaton was a farmer of comfortable means. His family traced its lineage to John Eaton, who arrived from Dover, England in 1635, settling in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Amos Eaton by the age of 16 constructed his own compass & chain to survey land as a chain bearer. Eaton studied at Williams College. After graduating in 1799 with high marks in natural philosophy,
Despite an interest in the natural sciences, Amos Eaton then undertook the more practical & potentially lucrative study of law in New York City. He was admitted to the state bar in 1802. From 1802 to 1810 he practiced law & worked as a land agent & surveyor in Catskill, New York.
In 1811 Eaton was imprisoned on charges of forgery in a land dispute. Although Eaton & many others always maintained his innocence he spent nearly 5 years in jail. During his incarceration he began a course of scientific studies & upon his 1815 release spent a year at Yale College studying botany, chemistry & mineralogy.
He then returned to Williams College to offer a science course of lectures including botany & published a botanical dictionary. In 1817, he published his Manual of Botany for the Northern States, the first comprehensive flora of the area; it ultimately went through 8 editions.
After co-founding the Rensselaer School in 1824, Van Rensselaer appointed Eaton to teach botany & land surveying. Eaton developed a new kind of institutional approach to learning devoted to the application of science to life. Eaton's original aim was to also train teachers.
Eaton's system of practical hands-on instruction caused traditional liberal-arts colleges to expand their own curricula & set up departments or schools of engineering & science. After becoming professor of natural history at Harvard College in 1842, Asa Gray required some practical work of all of his students in botany along the lines established by Amos Eaton.
Eaton promoted science education for women, he had lectured them on his tour of New England, & he was persuaded that their failure in science was caused by inferior opportunity, not "perversion of female genius." Eaton, clearly hoped to educate females at the school. He believed that women were capable of learning practical science & mathematics; they simply had not been taught the subjects at traditional female academies. His commitment led Eaton to enroll a class of 8 young women in a special mathematics course to show that they could advance beyond "the speculative geometry & algebra as generally practiced in female seminaries." The 8 young ladies who participated in Eaton's experiment continued their education at the Troy Female Seminary.
Among a long list of books, Amos Eaton published
Elementary Treatise on Botany (1810)
Botanical Dictionary (1817) (2nd 1819, 4th ed. 1836)
Manual of Botany (1817)
Botanical Exercises (1825)
Botanical Grammar & Dictionary (1828)
