Monday, February 24, 2014

Local history -Vassar College, John Raymond, the Beechers, the Morse family and oh yes Eaton History!


Burchard Familt with Alli, Anna and Louise

I read my mail today and realized that is still wonderful to open the mail and get information for the museum from Vassar College.  The fact is Eaton has a role in Vassar College’s history in its earliest days.  This dates to the college’s early President John Raymond and his wife Cornelia Morse Raymond and her cousins Anna and Louise Burchard.  It also dates to the founding of today’s Colgate University since Raymond taught at Colgate and on the Burchard side... Seneca Barton Burchard was a supporter and supervisor of the building of the  hall that today's COVE is located in.

Melville Landon
John Raymond met and married Cornelia Morse Raymond while at Colgate... he also became good friends with Henry Ward Beecher who visited him often up here.  Of course Henry Ward Beecher’s relatives in Eaton were Samuel Stowe of Stowe’s Tavern, and Mrs. Joseph Morse (Eunice Bigelow Morse)...(His grandmother was a Stowe)

Another part of the relationship appears to be Melville Landon (Eli Perkins) whose father John Landon moved his family to Eaton from Lichfield, Conn. home parish of Rev. Lyman Beecher... Harriets & Henry's father.  John Landon was an early supporter of the Olive Branch Newspaper (published in Sherburne, NY), which carried all of Beecher’s editorials and articles.  *Please note that the Beechers of the Sherburne area are direct relatives.  Melville Landon was a very good friend of Henry’s and the Morse family. (Also remember that Harriet Beecher Stowe married Calvin Ellis Stowe (Great Aunt was Mrs. Joseph Morse -Eunice Bigelow Morse) who became the assistant to her father at Lane Seminary in Ohio.

My… my… how things entangle as we study the past.

Louise Burchard
Cornelia’s relatives were Anna Burchard and Louise Burchard who were enticed to go to Vassar when John Raymond became President of the Vassar College, and today a scholarship still retains Louise’s name since she also taught at the college.  Louise wrote an early book on information for called Aid for Women Voters...published when the women first got the vote... she was an avid women's rights advocate. (We have a copy of her book at the museum)

Anna and Louise Burchard where the daughters of Sylvester Burchard and Allie Morse…Allie was Bigelow Morse’s daughter and Sylvester Burchard was the head of the Chenango Breeder’s Association that brought the first breeding herd of Holsteins to America.

Ahhhh…Eaton and its famous families have so much history that I will never be able to track it all…but the Old Town of Eaton Museum has artifacts that belong to all of these people and is a great place to learn the history of not only Eaton and Colgate…but also of the national figures who were missionaries, teachers, speakers, authors and on and on..

The Museum will be opening officially this year on Memorial Day Monday…come down and join us in our celebration of history!

A quick trip to the Old Town of Eaton Museum!




Wednesday, February 12, 2014

The true forest, poverty, Gordon Lightfoot and me the old folksinger!


I am totally sick that people can’t see the trees from the forest.  I have a number of FB friends who forward me stories on the homeless and the poor… yet do we really try to do anything about it… and yet things rage in Congress on cutting social programs, people who won’t work... minimum wage.   Nobody wants to live on the street unless they have mental problems... or are poor and unwilling to take a social program... or live in an area where there is no safety net!.

We are happy to pay big bucks to go to a game or movie and look with disdain on anyone who might be standing on a corner looking for a handout.

Other FBers go on and on about people unwilling to work…. without the causes of unemployment or the mere fact that after being down so long they are not fit for public employment because of looks, disabilities or even worse… ignorance. 

We forget that not everyone is born with enough common sense or intelligence to care for themselves...they need help. What if they have no family?

Oh yes let us not forget our red, white, and blue flag wavers who fail to feel compassion for Vets who have come home with mental problems and who “litter” city streets as the homeless. 

As I sat in the cold stoking my woodstove… alone… I thought of a Gordon Lightfoot song I had sung for many years when I was into folk music… and had lots of friends and family.  Got out my old guitar and sang it…I leave the words with you... and I have shared the actual song being played at the end of the lyrics…listen and learn.

Oh the neon lights were flashin'
And the icy wind did blow
The water seeped into his shoes
And the drizzle turned to snow
His eyes were red, his hopes were dead
And the wine was runnin' low
And the old man came home
From the forest
His tears fell on the sidewalk
As he stumbled in the street
A dozen faces stopped to stare
But no one stopped to speak
For his castle was a hallway
And the bottle was his friend
And the old man stumbled in
From the forest

Up a dark and dingy staircase
The old man made his way
His ragged coat around him
As upon his cot he lay
And he wondered how it happened
That he ended up this way
Getting lost like a fool
In the forest

And as he lay there sleeping
A vision did appear
Upon his mantle shining
A face of one so dear
Who had loved him in the springtime
Of a long-forgotten year
When the wildflowers did bloom
In the forest

She touched his grizzled fingers
And she called him by his name
And then he heard the joyful sound
Of children at their games
In an old house on a hillside
In some forgotten town
Where the river runs down
From the forest

With a mighty roar the big jets soar
Above the canyon streets
And the con men con but life goes on
For the city never sleeps
And to an old forgotten soldier
The dawn will come no more
For the old man has come home
From the forest....









Saturday, February 8, 2014

Depression coming? Herbert Hoover, Green Lakes, Chittenango Falls & the CCC and more...


Historians read history books to give them a feel for the past and to give them a way to understand what happened, why it happened, if it was good or bad, and if we can learn from it.  This winter, during this unbelievable spell of cold, I have been reading and reading on the years leading up to the Great Depression….how we tried to solve it…and what could have prevented it.

Armed with this information …13 books later… I have decided that the conclusion I can draw from this past history is that if a Republican is elected President in the next two elections we will begin the cycle of the Great Depression again.  We are already starting because of today's Congress. 
                                                                                                                                               
What became most striking to me this week was the cutting of food programs for the poor while paying subsidies to the wantonness of large agricultural farm corporations and subsidiaries...including Monsanto. Especially dsiscouraging in the face of proven paid lobbying done by the corporations they benefit!

How sad to think of it happening again.

The depression was also fueled by the great dust bowls that ruined much of our farmland and sent poor farmers in vast number into  foreclosures of their poverty… basically the addition of Mother Nature’s wrath.  (Global Warming?) 

Everyone should read up on this lamentable and preventable dark period of our American history.  If you do you will see that during this time large wealthy corporations, wealthy companies, and wealthy people flourish.  You will also find that the head of the  U S Treasury for a good part of this period was Andrew Mellon…yes that rich Andrew Mellon.  (Sort of like a Koch brother as Treasury Secretary tody!) The wealthy remained wealthy, the middle class disappeared and the poor class embodied a vast hopeless swath of America.  

When we elected Herbert Hoover he swore hw could change it all by asking Americans to voluntarily help the sick, hungry and jobless.  He said that we did not need handout programs in the government.   It did not work.  The nation’s leaders (Congress) said that the problem was lazy people who needed to find jobs…. of course, of which there were few.  I part the trouble was because companies were inventing ways to mechanize workers jobs and force them out of industry, enabling them to make more …profits.  (Now we send the jobs overseas)

When things became totally desperate we did something…we made FDR President and he started work programs. Yes work programs.  The complaint then was that the government was giving them “leaf raking jobs”.  It was providing jobs.  These programs included among them the WPA, CCC, and a new National Guard force… it employed millions in government subsidized labor programs.  Programs that enabled us to build up our infrastructure, parks, community projects, repair schools, playgrounds, highways…and all of this done with these  supposed “lazy people” who didn’t want to work.

Today we in CNY have a wonderful array of parks done by some of these programs ...including Green Lakes Park, Robert Treman State Park, Montezuma, Trails in Brookfield, Gilbert Lake, Chittenango Falls Park, Selkirk Shores Park, Buttermilk Falls State Park and many, many more….

Time to wake up America…learn history…don’t rely on FOX News and TV and Radio Commentators who choose to stir the pot so that their “sponsors” and stations pay them more.  Get out and enjoy what these supposed laborers did for us!  Remember but for the grace of God you have a job...this could all change in a heartbeat... 

Here is a video I did of Green Lakes State Park once called Green Pond!