Biography

Margaret O'Neill (or O'Neale) Eaton, better known as Peggy Eaton, was the daughter of Rhoda Howell and William O'Neale, the owner of Franklin House, a popular Washington, D.C. hotel. Peggy was noted for her beauty, wit and vivacity. About 1816, at age 17, Margaret O'Neale married John B. Timberlake, a 39-year-old purser in the Navy. Her parents gave them a house across from the hotel, and they met many politicians who stayed there. In 1818 they met and befriended John Henry Eaton, a 28-year-old widower and newly elected senator from Tennessee. Margaret and John Timberlake had three children together, one of whom died in infancy. John Timberlake died in 1828 while at sea in the Mediterranean, in service on a four-year voyage. When Margaret married Senator John Henry Eaton (1790–1856) shortly after the turn of the year, causing a scandal among the ladies of Washington who felt she had not respected the appropriate length of mourning for her dead first husband. Through her marriage to United States Senator John Henry Eaton, she had a central role in the resulting Petticoat affair that disrupted the Cabinet of Andrew Jackson.\\\

One of O'Neill's children with Timberlake is found to be Margaret Rose Timberlake Randolph (Mar. 16, 1825-Mar. 24, 1855), Ancestry.com.\\\


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_O'Neill_Eaton