(1817-1903)
“The Greatest Rider Ever Known”
If anyone was meant for the circus life, it was Eaton Stone. The son of a Vermont lawyer, Eaton first ran away at age ten to join a traveling circus—his father had to sue for kidnapping to get his son back. When Eaton ran away a second time, again to join a circus, his father relented . . . and a star was born.
Eaton began as a horse groomer, plate spinner, and tumbler and went on to become a national and international star and one of the leading equestrians in the country—the first circus rider to do a backward somersault on a speeding, unsaddled stallion.
As the New York Clipper put it: “In daring, Eaton Stone was unsurpassed, and his act, which was accomplished upon a bareback steed, was wild and fearful. He would urge his horse to do his utmost speed, and without saddle or bridle, sometimes standing on the back of the animal, and sometimes seated upon his flanks, holding on, one scarcely knew how, he careened around the arena with a velocity almost painful to look at.”
Called “the one great horseman of the world,” Eaton would enter the ring at breakneck speed standing on his galloping horse, leap to the ground and back up, and then do a headstand on the horse!
According to one contemporary newspaper account, Eaton Stone “ranks at the head of equestrians” and is “the best horseman that has ever entered the ring.” According to another, he was “the first bareback rider in this country, and the first equestrian to introduce somersaulting backwards, through hoops and over poles and banners, from the back of his horse while it was under full speed.”
From 1834 to 1867, Eaton performed with or starred in nearly every major circus traveling throughout the United States. Contemporary, local newspapers are rife with accounts of the awards and honors bestowed upon him (gold medals, a diamond brooch, not to mention the twenty doubloons and a thousand cigars from the Governor General of Cuba!). In Philadelphia, Jenny Lind, the famous “Swedish Nightingale,” performed at a supper given in Eaton’s honor at which he was also presented a service of silver.
A star performer throughout the United States, Eaton Stone also wowed overseas audiences for three years, earning rave reviews from 1851 through 1854—and paving the way for Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill’s famous European tours decades later.
In 1851 Eaton opened at London’s Drury Lane Theatre, where he remained for four weeks. Seven thousand tickets were sold and, except for opera performances, there was more money taken in at the box office than ever before. The London Times said that Stone was “the best bareback rider ever seen in that city.” Eaton continued to perform to sold-out audiences in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland for the next three years.
Upon Eaton’s retirement in 1867, the New York Clipper wrote that “for many years he has enjoyed a reputation as the most daring rider of the age, and even now there are but few able to excel him in the performance of those feats which have made his name famous in nearly all parts of the world.”
Eaton retired, he said, “because it was time and because I could afford to.” He had accumulated a small fortune—his friend Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt himself took care of Eaton’s money—mostly by investing in real estate, eventually owning more than 2,500 acres throughout the United States. (His secret for success, he said, was to “never invest in circuses.”)
In 1874 he purchased a forty-acre farm in Franklin Township from the Satterthwaite family on property along Kingsland Road. Always a circus man, Eaton erected a “handsome private hippodrome fitted up for a training school, and some of the country’s best equestrians have put in months of hard practice there.”
He remained in retirement for twenty-seven years—until the 1894 Nutley Amateur Circus one-day charity event was held at his training facility, which was Eaton Stone’s last appearance as a performer in the circus ring.
Held for the benefit of the Red Cross, there were more than a thousand people in attendance, including Clara Barton. The fundraiser was covered not only by the New York Times and other prominent newspapers but by national magazines such as The Illustrated American and Harper’s Weekly.
The star of the show was Nutley Hall of Famer Annie Oakley, but here is how nationally known author and editor Henry Bunner (another Nutley Hall of Famer) introduced Eaton to the crowd that evening:
“This, ladies and gentlemen, is Eaton Stone, the greatest rider ever known.”
Eaton Stone resided the last days of his life in Franklin Township until he passed away on August 8, 1903, at the age of eighty-six. He is buried below a simple headstone in Nutley’s Methodist cemetery.