The History of Eaton, Tennessee, Gibson County

Eaton, Tennessee sits eleven miles west of Trenton on the right bank of the Middle Fork of the Forked Deer River. Established in 1827, it was named for John H. Eaton, Secretary of War under President Andrew Jackson. Before that, the site was known as Buckner's Bluff.

The county court appointed John W. Evans, John W. Buckner, William C. Love, Robert Tinkle, and John P. Thomas to lay off the town into a public square, streets, lots, and common land, with a board of commissioners chaired by John H. Raines handling lot sales and title transfers. Before the town was even formally located, Colonel Thomas Gibson had already built a house on the site and was selling goods to settlers — enough that the place was briefly called Gibsonport before the legislature changed the name the following year.

Eaton became one of the county's largest shipping points after the Little North Fork of the Forked Deer River at Trenton proved unreliable for boat traffic just two years into the county's settlement. After the Civil War, Confederate Captain John R. Dance opened a general merchandise store in Eaton, taking payment in cotton at season's end and shipping it by boat to New Orleans and Memphis — a trade pattern that shows how central river shipping remained to the town's economy for decades after its founding.