Peggy O'Neale Timberlake Eaton committed several unpardonable social sins in Washington, DC. The original one was simply being  brought up in a bar, the lovely daughter of a couple who ran a boardinghouse and tavern. Bad enough, but she also enjoyed the company of the  men she met there: she played a vivacious piano and was known to flirt. Married at 17 to a sailor, she worked at the tavern while her husband was away and allowed herself to be escorted around town by her husband's friend, a widowed Senator. When she married the Senator less than a year after her husband died another social line was crossed. Her elevation to Cabinet status when her husband, John Eaton, became Secretary of War under the President Jackson was too much for some the more proper women in town.

As bad as her sins were, the rumors were worse. Starting with the wife of Vice President John C. Calhoun, many of the wives of prominent men refused to have anything to do with her. The scandal didn't die until Jackson gave her husband an appointment out of town.