John A. Eastman

John Albert Eastman (March 4, 1821 – April 11, 1895) was an American lawyer from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin who spent two years (1850–1851) as a Democratic member of the Wisconsin State Senate.

Eastman was born in Strong, Maine. Until the age of eighteen worked on his father's farm during the season, going to school during the winter. In December 1839, he entered the Charleston Academy in Charleston, Maine, and in September 1841, began the study of law in the office of Philip M. Stubbs, and continued until the fall of 1843, teaching during the winters in Strong and Kingfield. On September 14, 1843, he left Strong and went to Platteville, Wisconsin, arriving there October 5, and taught school during the following winter. In 1844, he went to Fond du Lac, selecting that place as his future home.

He was the second lawyer in Fond du Lac County (he would eventually go into partnership with Erastus Drury). Eastman taught a "select school" in Fond du Lac with as many as twenty students from 1844-45 until a public school was organized in 1846.

A three-page letter from Eastman in "Fonddulac" [sic] to a Miss Frances A. Eastman in Strong, Maine (apparently his sister) dated October 20, 1846 survives, in which he complains that "constant labor" has reduced his weight from 170 pounds back in "Old Maine" to 148 pounds. He describes himself as busy there; he is the postmaster, and there are nine mails a week. He reports that he is engaged to "a fine amiable little girl, not handsome nor 'accomplished', but quiet, domestic, confiding" and that she thinks him "quite a fellow for a Yankee." Eastman had been postmaster since 1845, and was to remain postmaster until April 1849, when the new Whig presidential administration replaced him with a Whig. It is unclear whether the "fine amiable little girl" referred to is the same person as the Helen C. Darling whom he married on January 6, 1848.

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