EATON, MAnc.turr (O'NEILL). best known as Tracey O'NEILu, 0%1796-1879). The wife of J. E. Eaton (q.v.), Secretary of War under l'resi dent Jackson. She was the daughter of a \\ ashington tavern-keeper. About 1823 she mar ried a )11:111 named Timberlake, a purser in the United States Navy, who in 1828 committed suicide while on duty in the Mediterranean. In January. 1829. she was married to Major .1. H. Eaton t q.v.), who soon afterwards entered Presi dent Jackson's Cabinet as Secretary of War. Various charges were brought against her in connection with her alleged conduct toward Major Eaton himself while site was still Mrs. Timberlake. On this account the wives of other Cabinet members and Washington society gener ally refused to recognize her. Jackson. an old friend of both :Mr. and Mrs. Eaton, endeavored to break down the opposition against her, and even seems to have threatened to remove several of the Secretaries should their wives remain obdurate; hut his efforts met \dill little suceess, and partly for this reason Jackson effected an almost complete reorganization of his Cabinet..
Politically the incident was chiefly significant from the faet that it helped to strengthen the friendship between .lacks in and Van Buren, who had ostentatiously befriended Mrs. Eaton. and to alienate Jackson and Calhoun. then Vice President. whose wife had persistently refused to recognize Mrs. Eaton socially. and thus to assure the nomination of the former in prefer ence to the latter for the Presidency by the Democratic Party in 1836. In later years Sirs. Eaton is said to have been exceedingly popular in the society of Madrid while her husband was Minister of the United States to Spain. Soule time after the death of her husband (1856) she married a young Italian dancing master, An tonio Buchignani, then only ahont twenty years old, from whom she eventually secured a divorce. Consult : Parton. Life of _Ind mu. .1 ackson, vol. iii. (New York. 1860): and an article, "Margaret O'Neill Eaton." in the International Reriew, vol. viii. (New York, 1850).