Person:John Eden (3)

John R. Eden, was a lawyer and would later serve five terms in Congress. He was born in Bath County, Kentucky, in 1826, and his family moved to frontier Rush County, Indiana, in 1831 when he was five years old. He worked on the family farm in the spring, summer and fall, and went to a log cabin school in the winter until the age of 18, when he began teaching in a neighborhood school. After teaching six or seven years, he decided in 1850 to become a lawyer, and became what we might now call an intern in a small firm in Rushville, Indiana. After two year s study, in 1852 he moved to Shelbyville, Illinois, and was admitted to the bar in June of that year. The committee of lawyers designated to examine him as to his qualifications consisted of Abraham Lincoln, David Davis (whom Lincoln would later appoint to the Supreme Court of the United States), and Samuel Moulton, a local lawyer. John R. later told his family that when the committee met him in a hotel room, Lincoln flopped himself onto a bed, saying to the others that they could examine John R., but he (Lincoln) was going to sleep--which he proceeded to do. In any event, John R. was found to be qualified, and a year later, in August 1853, he moved a few miles north to the new town of Sullivan, where his older brother, Joseph Edgar Eden, had recently settled.

Sullivan had been established in 1845 as the county seat of the then-new county of Moultrie (set apart as a separate county in 1843). As the center of justice for the new county, Sullivan offered attractive prospects for a bright, energetic younger lawyer--particularly since there was only one other lawyer practicing in the county when John R. relocated in 1853. However, his practice was not confined to Sullivan. He rode the circuit with other pioneer lawyers, traveling from county seat to county seat, following the circuit judge as he convened court in the different locations. One of the judges before whom Eden frequently appeare d was David Davis, one of his law examiners. Prominent lawyers with whom he practiced were U.F. Linder, O.B. Ficklin, Charles Constable, and, of course, Abraham Lincoln.

In 1856, the year of his marriage, John R. Eden had been elected States Attorney for the Seventh Judicial Circuit , comprising nine central Illinois counties, and he served in that capacity for four years while, at the same time, building his own private law practice. In November 1859 John R. became political editor of the first newspaper published in Moultrie Cou nty--the Sullivan Express, owned at that time by J.H. Waggoner. The paper was a strong supporter of the Stephen Douglas wing of the Democratic party. Eden's political talent and writing ability are said t o have given "the paper prominence among the journals of Central Illinois, and made for himself a reputation as a strong and vigorous writer of political articles."3 In 1860 Eden was nominated by the Democrats for a place in the state legislature, but was defeated in the heavily Republican district by a few votes.

In 1862 the Democrats in the Seventh Congressional District made him their candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, and he was elected, taking his seat in the thirty-eighth Congress in March 1863. In 1864 he was renominated, but was defeated by the Republican candidate, and returned to Sullivan in March 1865 shortly before the end of the war. At that t ime Rose was not quite seven years old.

During the next few years, her father built his law practice--first in Sullivan, and then for two years--1870-1871--in nearby Decatur. Rose attended public school in both places and also studied music privately, learning to plan t he piano well. In 1872 the family moved back to Sullivan into a large new house on McClellan Street, six blocks west of the courthouse square. Rose's brother later speculated that John R. moved the family back to Sullivan not because his law practice w ould improve but because his Congressional prospects would be brighter.

... Despite his unsuccessful bid for re-election to Congress in 1864 and an unsuccessful run for Governor of Illinois in 1868 as the Democratic Party's candidate, John R. Eden's political career was far from over. He was again elected to Congress in 1872, and was r e-elected in 1874, 1876 and 1884. As a result, Rose was to experience a broadening of social and cultural horizons that would have been inconceivable had her father remained a small-town lawyer in rural Illinois. At some point in the Congressional term to which he was elected in 1876, John R. brought Rose and Emma, her older sister, with him to Washington D.C., where they enrolled in the Academy of the Visitation. The Academy, located in Georgetown a few miles west of the Capitol, conducted its clas ses in a new three-story building rebuilt in 1873. Rose met students from different parts of the country and studied literature, history, science, art, music and languages -- French and German. She was a fine student, winning prizes in French, rhetoric and music and graduating as valedictorian in June 1879 not long after her father's fourth term in Congress expired.

1.   Fragments of Martin Family History.

   http://www.edenmartin.com/family/part2.htm