This week, Pie & Bake Sales, Pecksport & the Chenango Canal

Steve & Cathy with some of our bake goods!

Finally except for the Christmas gathering, which is also the Birthday gathering for December, things are winding done.  The pie sale and the making of the pies provided some interesting moments and here I will mention our little group of Friends of the Old Town of Eaton Museum who came through…Pat Utter, Barbara Keough, Steve and Judy Goodfriend, Michele Kelly, Jen Caloia, Judy Oplinger, Cathy Nagle, and Bob Betz... who baked and baked up a storm.  When we got to the sale there were 45 pies and when we left there were none.

I am personally thankful for their help and sincerely thankful to the Eaton Community Bible Church and Pastor Pollock for allowing us to use the basement for the pie sale.  This made the parking so much easier and the building well well lit for the sale.

The week also provided for some interesting sidelights as we had interesting visitors also, Kevin Orr and I were able to film a section on the Chenango Canal video that we have been working on.  

The Canal is really an interesting part of Eaton’s history.  In reality only a small part of it is in Eaton…but that small part was probably the most important part as it, as it is through Eaton that all the water for the main section of the canal flowed.  The waters of the Leland Ponds, Woodman Pond, Lebanon Reservoir once know as Kingsley Brook Reservoir, Hatch’s Lake, Bradley Brook and Eatonbrook Reservoir met there.  Yes even Lebanon Reservoirs runoff makes a turn and runs north to join the canal at a spot near Pecksport. 

If you stop at the bridge on 12b over the fishing section of the canal, just off Wendover Road, and glance east you can see where it all enters.

The other interesting thing about the area was the ingenuity of Josiah Peck and his son Alonzo who dug out an area that would allow more than one canal boat to unload at the same time.  Alonzo who also ran the Chenango Canal Boat Lines erected a large warehouse at Pecksport to allowing an overflow of goods to be stored from either the northern or southern routes.

Today there is nothing to mark the spot as the signs and historic markers one by one have disappeared.  This isa sad actually as the vanished history was an important part of the canal which bought number of new towns and new families to our area.