A Special 28th Fall Festival History Weekend

Remember.... this weekend is Fall Festival History Weekend and our special event for History Day.  Sunday, Oct. 19th... the Old Town of Eaton Museum will be open from 1 to 3pm  followed by a lecture at the old Auction Barn on Rt. 26 at 3:30 pm.

 The lecture will be on the historic Eaton Cemetery and will offer a virtual tour of its history!  

Please realize that the history of all our small areas and cities is contained in the final resting place of it former inhabitants who have now passed!  Eaton's Historic Eaton Cemetery is no exception and really has some wonderful stories to tell.  I love to give the tour because some of the stories are so entertaining and some so sad!

From the "Mean Men Stories" of Melville Landon, to the Revolutionary War stories of Veterans from Eaton who served like Miles Standish lll, and the remarkable founding families of Morse and Leland. You will  learn about their connections to the Battle of Bunker Hill, connections to the Mormon history that flows down the hill from the Bonney Farm.  Did you know that John Brown and his men rode through Eaton where his niece lived.

The history in our EatonCemetery includes many of the founders of the Eaton Museum as well as some of its most remembered citizens...so mark it on your calendar and come to the Auction Barn next to the Eaton Post Office, I guarantee you will enjoy a special Sunday afternoon with Backstreet Mary and the museum gang!!

Refreshments will be served!

Democracy, Genealogy, Eaton Families, &Thanksgiving

                                     Picture of Eunice Bigeows kitchen at the Morse House

                                               as it looked when the Motts lived in it.

More Genealogy...

We have been getting ready for our Colonial Holiday Celebration of Thanksgiving  this week... and I have been going through the genealogy of a number of the early settlers of the Town of Eaton and vicinity it is interesting to note how many of the early settlers could trace their bloodline back to members of the Mayflower.  Myles Standish III directly from Myles Standish  and who we honored this Memorial Day, is buried in the Eaton Cemetery. Patience Kent, who married Bigelow Morse, was related to three of them: the John Howland, the John Bilington, and the Isaac Allerton.  Some like Hanna Hall Clark were related to the first elected official, Governor Bradford.

Bradford was a very interesting person who was born in Austerfield, England, and who faced many hardships in his early life including the death of his mother and father.  William Bradford, who as a boy walked to a separatist Church in Babworth, broke at an early age with the Church of England.  This break eventually led him to Holland and on the venture of his lifetime with his fellow Pilgrims, to the New World.

Once here in America, Bradford was elected to office as Governor, a post he held for 36 years, the first ten of which he received no compensation for.

Bradford wrote a number of books of poetry and books on Congregationalism: his most important work, however, was a volume called Of Plimouth Plantation (Which we will talk about at a later date.)

Since the Plymouth Colony had no Royal Patent, they adopted their own system of government, a system that was drawn from their needs and from their faith.  It is this system that was set forth in the Mayflower Compact.

From The Mayflower Quarterly, the American historian Samuel Eliot Morrison says. “In 1636 the Pilgrims even created a Bill of Rights of their own.”

The article, written by J. Allyn Bradford, shows that in the rules they set forth which included that no laws would be made or taxes laid without the consent of the citizens (called Freemen), a free election of Governor and Assistants, the right to an impartial and equal justice, nobody was to be punished except by the law of the Colony, as well as a trial by jury, only called if there were two witnesses to the crime and or sufficient circumstantial evidence.

Between Bradford’s and the Colony’s reforms was the separation of Church and State, something we still employ today.

The key word in our pursuit of the history of the Pilgrim’s is DEMOCRACY.  Democracy, was the basis for the Pilgrim’s government, carried through both the church and the state.

     

The church of the Pilgrim’s was based on a primitive church discussed in the Bible in the Book of Acts.  In our Colonial terms it was called Congregationalism, a subject that Governor William Bradford discussed in full in one of his writings late in life called A Dialogue Between the Older and Younger Men.

The Pilgrims were actually pushed out of England because they believed that the King was not the head of the church, but that Jesus Christ was.  The church itself was democratic in all of its dealings, and it left marriage a civil, not spiritual, right.

     

   

 With the election of the President today in my thoughts,  William Bradford must have been  quite a leader as he was elected the Governor of Plymouth Colony 30 times.

 
So Happy Thanksgiving ... and pass on this bit of history.

History of Pratt House - A Piece of Missing History

 

 The James Pratt house, which for almost 70 years has sported a historic marker, burned.  The house located today on Route 26 once sat on the hill next to the Great Skaneateles Turnpike on lands once owned by Joseph Morse, who was considered by many to be the father of Eaton because of his expansive business empire.  Its builder, Dr. James Pratt, came from Massachusetts in the early 1800’s and became the first physician in the Town of Eaton and the town’s first teacher, moving to teach in the early days in rotation to three different sites within the town.

 

The house which had fallen into disrepair over the years was currently a two story home, but in the early 1800’s when built it was described by noted artist Carlton Rice as a white one-story building.  Rice would come to Eaton with Pratt’s cousins to visit his Rice relatives who also lived in Eaton.

 

     The Dr. once owned interest in the Eaton Woolen Mill with Joseph Morse and others and had married Laurency Eaton, the daughter of James Eaton one of Eaton’s first settlers.  (*Please note Eaton was not named for James but for Gen. William Eaton of Tripoli fame.)

 After his first wife’s death Dr. Pratt took Joseph Morse’s daughter Eunice as his wife in one of the most notable wedding ceremonies ever held in the village.  The wedding took place on the first of June, of 1814, at the Morse’s new Stone house in the Village of Eaton. (Also marked by and historic marker) and among its guests were some of the notables of Madison County’s history including Col. Lincklean, Col. Angel DeFerrier and his wife Polly, Peter Smith and his sons Gerrit (the abolionist) and Peter Skenandoah Smith, Joshua Leland’s widow Waitstill and an entourage of Native Americans, the Stowes, the Cramphins and many others, basically anyone who was anybody.  The couple were married by the Rev. Jonas Thompson.

 

     Eunice Morse had come to the then wilderness of what would become Madison County with her father, the son of Capt. Joseph Morse and mother Eunice, who was of the famous Bigelow family of Natick immortalized in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Old Town Folks.  Young Eunice attended school under Dr. James Pratt, and was exceedingly friendly with the Indian children of the area, often inviting them in to warm by the fire. (The Morse family always left the “latch spring” open for their native friends.)  After her father’s death, Ellis, a brother who also came with them, would take the businesses of Eaton over from his father and his brother Joseph Morse Jr.   Joseph Sr. upon his death had bequeathed Eunice $600 to be paid by Joseph Jr. in 3 years from his death, and a lot.  Eunice continued her education going on to graduate from Clinton Academy in 1810 – the last graduating class before it became Hamilton College.

 

The family was on a move to Palmyra, MO. Where a son James by his first wife found prosperity and died, his grave has never been found.  Eunice moved west, some believe perhaps in hopes of finding him.  She never did.  Dr. Pratt and Eunice’s children and Dr. Pratt’s grown children from his first wife settled near Knox where Eunice lived until her death.  She was considered by all a remarkable woman for her time, she had served the earliest period of our county’s history.

 

An interesting side note is that Dr. Pratt’s will created quite a storm when he left money to fight an ongoing lawsuit with the Congregational Church he was such a part of.  During this period Charles Grandison Finney, the Evangelist of Oberlin fame, had favored the congregation standing to sing and sitting to pray.  Dr. Pratt believed this wrong and spent much of his fortune fighting this practice.  He suing the church, the church he (Ironically, Charles G. Finney as a boy lived in early Eaton Village then Log City with his aunt and uncle the Cyrus Finney

Finneys.)  

Eunice Morse Pratt, Pioneer Woman

It is so interesting to find history in your mailbox.  I received a note from a lady in Missouri who was looking for information on her family members who arrived from Eaton in the early 1830’s.  Since I do history on the Morse family it proved to be an interesting relook at history for me.  Her relative was Eunice Morse, Joseph Morse’s daughter.

 

Eunice received a good education starting as a child in Eaton under the tutorship of Dr. James Pratt our town’s first teacher.  He taught school early on and the school rotated from Col. Leland’s to Joseph Morse’s and on to the “Center” as it was called near todays Morrisville.

 

Pratt was married to Laurancey Eaton, who died and left him to fall for one of his students, daughter of Joseph Morse.  Their wedding was the first at the Old Stone Morse Mansion and was attended by anyone who was important from Gerrit Smith and his father to Mrs. Leland who arrived in a carriage guarded by other guests, the Native American friends of area.  It is said they came in full native regalia on impressive horses.

 

She and her husband eventually moved on to find a new home and follow others from their family and area to Missouri.  Unfortunately, on a trip west he was killed.  Undaunted she decided to follow and look for the truth.

 

I have copies of some of the letters she sent back from there and they are so interesting I thought I would do a series of articles on her, her time, and Eaton.  Included here is an excerpt from - Palmyra Marion County Missouri in October of 1836.

 

“Dear brother - We arrived safe in Palmyra in five weeks and one day from the hour we left home had a very pleasant journey most of the way.  We had some difficulty to get through the mud, which we should not have had if we had started sooner.  

 

When we came to the first bad road we had to walk some and ride some.  We found a man with a four-horse wagon without a load.  We hired him to carry us and our load to Indianapolis 36 miles then we found roads very good until we came to the first prairies in Illinois here these roads were very good a few roads then a slough so deep it was almost impassable.  It was nearly dark and we were nine miles from a tavern.  David was sick with a headache.  We began to be afraid of being stalled in the sloughs.  We soon saw two horsemen a coming towards us one of them road forward to show us the way.  He offered to put in his horse and ride and let David ride our smallest horse, which was very tired.  

 

We got along very well until a little after dark.  The horses then mired in a slough and after making many unsuccessful attempts to extricate the wagons the horses fell and they had to hold their heads out of the muddy water till they could clear them from the wagon and as a last resort we left our wagon and rode two on a horse near three miles.  We then arrived at this young mans house that helped us.  

 

We had every attention that poverty joined with kindness could bestow.  They went with James in the morning and got the wagon.  We hired one of them to go with us with his horses ninety miles.  We then came to the stage road, which was very good.  We did not like Ohio nor Indiana as well as Illinois the land is good and very handsome but unhealthy.  They can raise grain with very little labor.  When we arrived Galen was absent.  Two Mr. Wrights his wives brethren were a boarding at his house.  They received us with as much pleasure as if they were brothers.”

 

It is so interesting, and such a long journey for a widow from Eaton who became a pioneer much like her mother who came to Eaton in 1796 by oxcart with husband and children, Eunice Bigelow Morse.

 

 

 

The Sage Tavern - Missing Markers & Log City

Isaac Sage built the first tavern on the site of Eaton village in 1802; it was situated on the corner opposite the site of the later Exchange Hotel  (now apartments) and remained standing for over one hundred and fifty years.  It was notable as it was also the first stick build house in the entire area since early builders at that time used logs... which is why Eaton was referred to as "Log City".

Few people who live in Eaton realize that because of water source of the Alderbrook, today's Eatonbrook,, Joseph and his son Ellis Morse were able too ran a sawmill in Eaton shortly after its settlement. With improvements, I am sure; the building stood as a beautiful early structure that stood until a few years ago when it was taken down.  Past owners just let it sit.


In an early book on Muller Hill it was explained that Louis Anthe Muller whole stayed in Hamilton until his Muller Mansion was livable, often stopped at Sages Tavern on his trips to his building site above Georgetown.

Sage eventually moved west and opened a few other taverns going west until he reached Ohio, since I believe he is most likely the Isaac Sage who is buried there.

I love this interesting story from Hammond's history tells this story about one of Eaton's less desirable tavern stops, however the moniker of Eaton remained "Log City" for many years....

A stranger who had traveled hither, and' was generously  entertained by the hospitable people, was found to be the  prince of good fellows and withal a wag. In the midst of their jollification, he took a flask of "good cheer," ascended J  one of the low roofed log buildings, and in the presence or  a group of admiring comrades, delivered a short and witty  harangue, flourished his bottle, and drank to the health of  " Log City," which was answered by the waving of hats andthree rousing cheers.

The Old Union School and Eaton Education History

The schools in Eaton date back to its earliest days.  The Morse, Pratt and Leland families immediately started schooling and Dr. James Pratt acted as the teacher.  The original school rotated from the Morse House to the Leland House to Dr. Pratt’s house with students staying at each house during the winter weather.

From there a small schoolhouse was built in the area now known as the Eaton Village Cemetery, which, was located on the old Indian Trail.  That path is still the entrance to the cemetery today.  

 During the Bicentennial of Eaton the tie capsule was buried there.  This is the school that Charles Grandson Finney attend as a young boy when he stayed with his aunt and Uncle the Sylvester Finneys.

Another structure was eventually built at the foot of the hill across from the Cramphin farm on Landon Road as Mrs. Cramphin {Anna Cleveland} was the schoolteacher.  Mr. Cramphin later moved the building onto the Cramphin farm to use.

Eventually the Union School system was formed and a proper school was built on the site of a private school on Brooklyn Street during the 1850’s, that school was in use until the brick school on Morrisville Eaton Road was built.  The house next door was also used for schooling. Today of course the school system has centralized. 

The Brooklyn Street school was eventually purchased and turned into a home with the windows from the Drugstore that was torn down installed on the first floor living room..

The Old Town of Eaton Museum has probably more memorabilia of the different schools than any other thing and has a great collection of pictures, books and even schoolbooks.  One photo of its last graduating class is available to purchase at the museum.

The Bicentennial Cake was set infront of the school that was then Pauline Brown's House and if you view the video below you will see so many people enjoying its grounds once again including many members in the picture above that were still alive in 1995.

D- Day Anniversary and the Anniversary of the Eaton Church

Today is a special day as it is the 75 Anniversary of D-Day and in Eaton, it is the day the current Eaton Church was dedicated on June 6th in 1833.  It’s the historic sight I see while having coffee in the morning.

At that time it was the Congregational Church, its founding members included two of the original incorporators of the Baptist Theological Seminary that became Madison University and today's Colgate University.

In 1848 the church hosted the Congregational Society’s yearly northeast meeting at which time the Congregational Society officially adopted an anti-slavery stand.  Some information on this is in the Cornell College Library.

The church had many noteworthy pastors including its first installed minister the Reverend E D Willis.  I became interested in Willis because he lived in my house, a house that Allen Nelson Wood and his wife would buy on their return to Eaton.

The church’s members at that time included Allen Nelson Wood founder of the Wood, Taber & Morse Steam Engine Works and both his partners Loyal Clark Taber and Walter Morse.

Other famous Eatonites who attended services were Melville Delancey Landon and his family. Landon became a well known as both a writer and as a lecturer. Many rich and famous people attended the church during the Victorian era during what time Grover Cleveland’s brother; the Reverend William Cleveland was its pastor.

The church still today houses a historic Meneely Clock and Bell, and the churches windows which bear the names of some of Eaton’s greats... still grace its interior; an interior that sports hand turned pillars turned by Allen Wood himself.

During the Civil War the Eaton Churches banded together and held services attended by each other patrons during the week to pray for the wars end.  Prayers were also read during the Wars that followed.

Eventually, the Congregational Church became part of the Federated Churches of Eaton and then later became a Community Church under the Pastor Thomas Clark who improved not only the building, and but helped institute a fabulous AWANA program. During the time he was pastor the congregation also built a large activities build that is used today for youths to play basketball and games and to host special functions.

The Church located on Brooklyn Street is the focal point of a new display at the Eaton Museum, so come down and visit the Sunday from 1-3 pm.  Pick up a beautiful newly done portrait of the church as it looked in the 1800's, we have them for sale!