Sunday, October 25, 2015

I am Quitting, Eaton History & Museum, and the Keepers of the Fire and you!

This week’s blog is about quitting…yes quitting.  I am a person who never gives up…really!  I started the quest to help Eaton get a business since 1995.  The only thing Eaton the Town and Hamlet had going for them at that time was “History”. So the little group called Neighbors for Historic Eaton… that has morphed into Old Town Folks today… set out to use that history as a vehicle to gain recognition and to put Eaton into the public eye. We have certainly accomplished that and now have a museum that works to that end.

I started doing Fall Festival History Weekends to bring not only Eaton’s History to the public, but also all of the small town museums that have been overlooked.  To accomplish this I put up an early website called Our Old Town.  We did 8 years of these fall history tours.  Today I have expanded this to include the history of upstate New York with our current website www.historystarproductions.com.

As Madison county Historian I worked to save the records that had been long since forgotten and abused.  Records that record the lives of the people of Madison County.  I have a hard time getting people to visualize that a county is not a drawing on a piece of paper but is people…the people that live within it…both past and present.  In that capacity I tried to save the Madison County Fair…donating my time and much of my own money.  We have a Fair today.

I have written so many articles in the past 20 years on our shared history, so many weekly blogs, books, and in all this time have never been paid for any of it and almost never thanked either.

I have toured to promote each of these quests…doing public speaking engagements, 31 in one year alone for the Fair.  I have done numerous public speaking lectures to raise money for my museum…but I have to stop.  Of all the things I do…public speaking is the thing I hate the most.  This month I am retiring…really.  I am giving the Eaton Cemetery tour on the 31st…yes Halloween…and that is it.

The museum will still be there, the history will still be in the public’s eye.. but I won’t be.  After 20 years I am turning the job of promoting our cultural heritage in the form of history back to you.  I implore you to support your local museums; …mark your memories by labeling photographs and donating important pieces of your communities’ history to your local society or museum…do not wait for it to be sold at auction to cover your debts.  Also remember that your children my not prize that memorabilia as you do. Volunteer with a group that works for your community such as fire departments, churches, cemetery association, and museum groups…etc.

Remember…each town, village, and hamlet needs what I call “Keeper’s of the Fire”.  In the old days whole groups of people traveled together to market with their goods…. travel that took in their time days by ox cart…they always left a few folks home who kept the home fires burning until their return.  So I ask you to become a modern keeper, by preserving and promoting the history (remembered lives) that founded our rural America, the future generations will be richer because of it!



   





Sunday, October 18, 2015

Snow on the ground, Georgia on My Mind, Hoagy Carmichael, and Priceless Music!

Quite a week that is a bit depressing also as the first winter snow has turned the ground to white.   The cold has officially taken over our nights and the chill in the air is noticeable. I just got a few new posts on my Facebook page from my brother and family visiting Savannah, Georgia, and started singing “Georgia on My Mind” and… as usual began to wonder about the song and who wrote it.  Yes… I was soon on another of my “History Quests”.

After a bit of research I realized that Hoagy Carmichael had written that classic and so many others that it was unbelievable. Born in Indiana with the name Howard Hoagland Carmichael to an electrician and his wife, a woman who played the piano for extra income. 

By six he was playing the piano and singing with the family, although as a young man he actually studied to be an attorney.  This seems to me so far from the music world…and yet, he somehow became involved with the music profession and by chance while writing some tunes and arranging music dates for a band in school…he met a coronet player by the name of Bix Beiderbecke and the rest is history.  

Carmichael began writing music including two tunes that became popular…“Washboard Blues” and the “Riverboat Shuffle”.  He was off…By the time he finished with his writing career he had accomplished something no one else had done…he had written four of the most recorded songs of all time…”Stardust”, “Georgia on My Mind”, “Heart and Soul” and my favorite….”The Nearness of You”!

Carmichael also appeared in a number of movies, 14 to be exact…with some of the world’s most famous actors and collaborated with some of the industries top talents like Duke Ellington. His tunes attracted many famous lyricists who wrote the memorable words to his priceless melodies.


Tune like “Stardust”, “Up a Lazy River”, “Lazy Bones”, “Georgia on Mind” and many more etched for him a spot in the Song Writer’s Hall of Fame…and his legacy still lives on today in music and in an era of great songwriters and lyricists.

***Nearness of you was done by everyone from Barbra Streisand to Kieth Richards....in my time it was Ricky Nelson who brought it to my attention...enjoy this baby boomer friends...




Saturday, October 10, 2015

Eaton Village Cemetery History and a Special Halloween Cemetery Tour!

Sometimes a cemetery is historic for a number of different reasons as well as for the famous people buried in it. One such cemetery is the  Eaton Village Cemetery which occupies a hill outside of the Hamlet of Eaton and contains the remains of many famous and near famous people.  As a special treat we will be holding a fall cemetery tour on Saturday, October 31st....yes Halloween...at 1pm.  The tour is free with a hope that you will donate something to the Cemetery Association and of course...Back street Mary will be giving the tour! The Cemetery is located just off Route 26 in the Hamlet of Eaton.

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Missionaries, Madison County History, Emily Chubbuck, and the Old Town of Eaton Museum!


While working on a new book named “The History You Never Knew” the past few days, I came across much information that has actually never come to light in regular history books.  Many of the young folk in Eaton actually tried to become missionaries to exotic lands many were successful.  It seems the lure of Burma and Siam was a firm and large part of the missionary movement here in the early 1800’s.
Everyone remembers stories of Eaton’s Emily Chubbuck, the writer who wrote under the pen name “Fanny Forrester,” who married Adoniram Judson and went off to Burma, but what about Andrew Bigelow Morse???
 Do you know this man?
The Reverend Andrew Bigelow Morse was the son of Ellis Morse and grandson of Joseph Morse. In 1849, at the early age of nineteen, Mr. Morse was graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, where his ranking as student admitted him into the scholarship roll of Phi Beta Kappa. 

After two years’ experience as principal of a Young Men’s Classical Institute in Albany, N.Y., he entered the Princeton Theological seminary, where he was graduated in 1864.  After another two years, part of which was spent in post-graduate work in New York and a part in the service of the church, he and his young wife, commissioned by the Presbyterian board of foreign missions, started for Siam.  This was the goal of their ardent ambitions and consecrations. 

Once in the field, he threw himself whole-heartedly into the work, but within two years Andrew’s health was shattered and he was ordered home. He continued working for several years on a literary work of permanent value.

 Because of his poor health during the Civil War, he was exempt from military service and debarred from the Christian commission.  So instead, he spent three years at Washington in the Treasury Department, ministering often in hospital and barracks.  In Washington he served in the somewhat famous “Treasury Guard” of which he frequently spoke with a smile. 

It is here he also became acquainted with many men who afterward became famous.  Among these was the one whom he always mentioned with a great admiration and reverence – the distinguished martyr President Lincoln.


Andrew takes his place of honor with the other young men of Eaton who also went to Siam (Burma) and China, Jonathan Wade and William Dean. **Newspaper stories filled with letters sent back to Eaton from Siam still exist in the Old Town of Eaton Museum today.