The Eames Families and Minnesota's Second State Geological Survey
In his second, 1866 report as State Geologist on the Northern, Middle and other Counties of Minnesota, Henry H. Eames wrote he “thought it advisable to give a brief outline of the different formations or systems of rocks, that form the crust of the earth, which those versed in geology can easily pass over without perusal, but which may be found of interest to those who have no access to works on the subject.” He then went on to divide the Earth’s crust into five classes: Igneous, Transition or Metamorphic, Secondary, Tertiary, and Diluvial and Alluvial.
When reading his summary, I was a bit stunned. Eames was outlining a division of the Earth that was decades out of date at the time of his writing. Although Saint Paul newspapers reported Eames had considerable experience in the coal measures of Great Britain, then the world’s leading coal user, it struck me that Eames must have been a self-taught geologist rather than a university-trained one. While that turned out to be true, I had no idea just how self-taught, and minimally taught, Henry and his brother, Richard, were.
The Eames brothers’ story did not begin in England’s Black Country, its famous coal mining district, but rather in central London. In a lower middle-class neighborhood, a fifth of a mile from Trafalgar Square and close to the banks of the at-the-time quite odious Thames River.
Eames Family Origins
The three Eames brothers who came to the United States, Henry Hugh Eames, Richard Megevan Eames, and Charles James Eames, were the sons of James Eames and Sarah Megevan. Henry was their second child and as twins, Richard and Charles were the couple’s third birth. An older brother, John, and two younger sisters, Jesy and Elizabeth, completed the family and would remain in England with their parents.
James Eames was born on July 17, 1794, the son of Hugh and Jane Eames. James’ baptism was not recorded until the 28th of September in Petersfield, Hampshire, England, fifty miles southwest of London and close to Portsmouth. His subsequent move to London was part of a great ongoing migration of rural people to the city. At the time, London’s population was undergoing remarkable growth as a continuation of the Industrial Revolution. In London, James listed his occupation as coachmaster, rather than coach driver. Coachmaster was a more prestigious position as it was someone who ran a coach service and hired drivers, so James considered the distinction important. Sarah Megevan, born in London, was a stay maker, creating whalebone and laced bodices for wealthy women. Hence, both parents were professionals who were part of England’s growing middle class. Yet, they appear to have instilled in their offspring a desire to be even more, as their sons all strove to surpass their middle-class background.
Eames and Megevan - 1822 banns
Eames and Megevan - 1823 banns
Eames and Megevan - 1827 marriage
James and Sarah’s romance encountered some obstacles as in June of 1822 they published a three-week course of banns in their parish church, yet did not marry. Banns were republished in November and December of 1823, but again no wedding followed. Not until nearly four years later did their marriage finally occur on October 6, 1827, at All Souls Church in Middlesex Parish, St. Marylebone. Even then, the two were married by license, rather than by banns. A marriage by license allowed couples to marry when there had not been enough time for banns to be read or when the marriage was not taking place in their home parish. Whatever delayed their marriage for over five years is unknown but once wed, their family quickly grew.
By the time of the 1851 British census, the Eames family lived at 26 Villiers Street in St. Martin in the Fields, Westminster, London, a short distance from Trafalgar Square. They shared their address with at least one other family. The site of their home is now part of the southeast corner of Charing Cross Station across the street from the Victoria Embankment Gardens. However, those gardens did not exist at the time. The embankment was built between 1865 and 1870 by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, who created the sewage system for central London in response to the Great Stink of 1858 that shuttered Parliament that year. Hence during the time they lived there, the Eames neighborhood, while middle class, was lower middle class with the smell of the Thames being at times overwhelming. By 1889, after Bazalgette’s restoration, the neighborhood had improved and was designated as being ‘Middle Class, well-to-do’ in Charles Booth’s famous Poverty Map of London.
26 Villiers Street in Charles Booth Poverty Map of London
All four Eames brothers were gas fitters, plumbers of the gas lines that brought gas lighting into upper class homes. The family’s move to Villiers Street may have been recent. While the oldest son had been born in Westminster, all five younger children were born in Fulham, on the banks of the Thames, a couple river bends upstream. The Imperial Gas Light & Coke Company of Fulham employed hundreds of workers, and with their Fulham origins the Eames brothers most likely worked for Imperial.
birth record of Henry Hugh Eames
birth record of Richard and Charles Eames
Henry Hugh Eames was born on March 28, 1830, and baptized on May 19th of that year. Richard Megevan Eames and Charles James Eames were born a year and a half later, on September 15, 1831, and baptized on December 23. Although all three brothers would later claim to be professors trained at prestigious universities, none of them attended college. However, they did have an unusual training that allowed them to overcome that handicap and undoubtedly played a pivotal role in maintaining their later careers.
All the World’s a Stage…
One of Richard Eames’s scrapbooks is preserved in the Minnesota Historical Society collection. The front of his scrapbook is filled with news articles concerning the Eames brothers’ geological exploits but the last third of the book contains numerous playbills for amateur theatrical productions the brothers took part in. All three brothers were amateur thespians and the oldest scrapbook playbill dates to 1846 when Richard and Charles were fourteen and Henry fifteen. Although the brothers only acted in local theater productions, those troupes were well enough established to print professional playbills. His early theatrical experience obviously meant a great deal to Richard as he kept the playbills for decades and had included them among the few possessions he brought to America. Once here, Richard and Henry continued to appear in numerous amateur theater productions in Vincennes, Indiana and Saint Paul, Minnesota.
1849 Playbill for Eames brothers performance in London
In the January 20th, 1865, St. Paul Pioneer, a reporter favorably critiqued Henry’s and Richard’s acting abilities. He reported that Henry “…sustained his characters well. He seems at home on the stage and has already become a favorite with the public.” Richard managed the complex task of playing two parts in the Merchant of Venice, sustaining “two characters opposite in all respects, with equal credit in each. …he won well-deserved applause. Like his brother, he is versatile and clever.”
Their stage experience, acquired at an early age, helped the brothers play offstage roles as well, casting themselves as mining engineers, chemists, and geologists, despite having no professional training in any of those fields. All three brothers embraced America’s Gilded Age ethics, relying on their thespian experience and brash audacity to play roles they were not qualified for, in attempts to achieve wealth and upper-class status. To a remarkable degree, the brothers succeeded, but their inexperience resulted in some failures along the way. And while the brothers somehow always managed to stay ahead of those failures, there were others who paid a costly price for the brothers’ lack of experience.
1865 Playbill for Eames brothers' performance in St. Paul, Minnesota
A drive to surpass their middle-class origins appears to have been a family trait. When their older brother John Eames married Salome Biffen on November 9th, 1857, their marriage took place at St. Bartholomew Hide in Southampton. John and Salome first met when their families were next-door neighbors on Villiers Street. Salome’s father, William Biffin, was a tailor who had taken in two orphaned nieces, one of whom had married John’s brother, Richard, earlier that year. On John’s marriage record, he entered his profession as engineer and his father’s as veterinary surgeon. While it might be possible that John had risen through the ranks of gas fitters to claim the title of engineer, he had no engineering training beyond his experience as a gas fitter. More importantly, while anyone whose profession deals with horses must learn something of their care, to claim his coachmaster father was a veterinary surgeon was beyond a minor embellishment. John was seeking to present a more refined upper-class background than he had, which is somewhat understandable as he lived in a society that placed an undue emphasis on social standing.
John Eames and Salome Biffen - 1857 marriage
In an analogous manner, his younger brothers would all divest their backgrounds as they left England, boarding the ship Arago in Southampton as gasfitters and amateur thespians, but disembarking in New York as geologists, mining engineers, and chemists.
In the 1861 England census, four years after the three Eames brothers departed for America, their parents were living at 75 Lamb’s Conduit in St. George the Martyr parish, a solidly middle-class neighborhood with aspirations. They were only a few blocks east of the British Museum and a block south of Foundling Hospital (in 1837-1839, Charles Dickens lived in a house two blocks east of the Eames’ abode). James and Sarah lived with their younger daughter Elizabeth and the family of their older daughter, Jesse, who was married to a grocer and had two children. James, now a retired coachmaster, would die in July of the following year, but Sarah lived until January 1877, spending her last years with her son John, in Greenwich, Kent. Richard’s correspondence records at the Minnesota Historical Society show he faithfully wrote his mother until her death and presumably his brothers did as well.
American Immigration
Henry was the first of the brothers to wed, marrying Elizabeth Ann Parsons on September 6th, 1856, at St. George Hanover Square in London. Unlike John, he listed his profession a bit more accurately as Gas Engineer. Elizabeth’s father was Edward Parsons, a Queens Messenger, an officer employed by the Foreign Office, so her family also had some status.
1856 marriage record of Henry Eames and Elizabeth Parsons
1857 marriage record of Richard Eames and Frances Baines
Richard married the following May 7th, in 1857. His partner was Frances Sophia Baines, the orphaned daughter of Henry Baines, a trunk maker, and the niece of the Eames family’s next-door neighbor, the tailor William Biffin. Their marriage also took place at St. George Hanover Square and quite soon after their marriage, Richard and Frances left for America with Henry and Elizabeth. Charles accompanied his brothers and their spouses to New York.
Arago - June 28, 1864
The five made the Atlantic crossing in the Arago, disembarking from Southampton, England and arriving in New York City on June 12, 1857. The Arago passenger list only records Henry’s profession (as Engineer) and the five traveled in cabin class, a step above second class. Even then, the passage may have been particularly uncomfortable for Elizabeth Eames, as at the time she was several months pregnant. Henry and Elizabeth’s first child, Elizabeth, was born in New York City shortly after their arrival.
Arago passenger list 1857 (Eames on lines 3-7)
The Arago was a wooden hull, sidewheel steamer built only two years earlier by Westervelt & Sons of New York. Later chartered by the Union Army during the American Civil War, it earned its brief mention in history books as the ship which returned the United States flag to Fort Sumter in April of 1865 in a ceremony marking the war’s official end. After the war, the Arago resumed transatlantic service for a few years before being sold to the Peruvian government in 1869.
Once landed, the Eames brothers’ paths began to diverge with Charles staying in New York while Richard and Henry soon moved their families to try their luck in what was then western Virginia. All three would stay in close contact over the years and keep in touch with their family in England. They would rely on one another as they built new identities in a new country, but to keep things simple, we will follow each story separately.