Emily Chubbuck Judson...AKA Fanny Forester

Well depending on where you read or get your information, today is Emily Chubbuck's birthday.  Of course Emily also has three very famous names and was born in 1818, which might account for any discrepancies.

Emily was born in 1818 ln Eaton, New York, and lived as a child in a cabin (Underhill Cottage)  built by her grandfather Simeon Chubbuck a Revolutionary War soldier.  The rustic cabin was located just off today's route 26 and the spot now sports a historic marker, though the cabin is long gone.

Emily's father never had much money and worked at a number of jobs including being a postman.  Her mother came from a fine family that most likely thought she had married beneath her.  So to help the family finances Emily was sent to work at a young age working for a woolen business, a silk thread business, and through need had to educate her self.

At 16 she walked to Nelson seeking the man who could hire her as a teacher, something that she did well, though in reality she made far less money as a teacher than as a worker. 

Emily managed to start writing little books of a religious nature.  Her mother, father & sister became stayed members of the Eaton 2nd Baptist Church thats pastor was Nathaniel Kendrick who became head of Madison University, today's Colgate. It is interesting to note however, that Emily did not join a church until later and she was chided by the locals who asked her, "When are you going to be saved?"

She eventually got a job at the Utica Seminary for woman where she bartered her education for teaching and made friends with the owners.  Taking a trip to New York with a friend she was struck by the difference and glamorousness of the city and wrote a tongue and check letter to N P Willis, editor of the New York Mirror - asking if he would hire her.  The letter was signed "Fanny Forester", which became a sensation for its day.  Willis never paid her for her writings, but he did make her famous, and her many articles about her hometown and life on the Eatonbrook became a book entitled Alderbrook Tales. or Musings and Trippings in Authorland.  These and her humorous pieces for the Mirror made Fanny Forester a well known name.

Fame did go to her head a bit, and she started enjoying spending time with friends in Philadelphia. It is there that she was introduced to a man 30 years her senior who was looking for someone to write a biography of his dead wife. The gentleman's name was Adoniram Judson, one of America's first Baptist Missionaries to Burma - a man who became a star in the Baptist circles that supported him. Emily ends up marrying him.

After the marriage she went back to Burma with Judson and becomes the missionary Emily C. Judson.  Emily bore Judson two children, a girl who lived and a boy that died at the same time as her husband.  After his death Emily returned to America and started writing poetry and pieces for  the missions.

Sick with Tuberculous, Emily died a short time later - after having been three famous people... teacher Emily Chubbuck, writer Fanny Forester, and the missionary  Emily C. Judson.

Her age at her death was only 37 years old... an interesting hometown woman that had been around the world and was an early woman writer of note!

Hilstory of the West Eaton Mills and another Famous Women Emily Chubbuck

Humorously I ran into one of the cashiers in the local grocery store who saw how hot and tired I was and commented that I was just as miserable when it was freezing cold...TRUE!  I did get to sit near the Alderbrook again and so this weeks blog came to mind...How many know the history of the West Eaton Mill area? Then this history blog is for you!

(Eatonbrook) -Alderbrook Mill History

When traveling down Route 26 today few people know of the great industrial Mill history of the West Eaton area so while going through some old clippings I found... I was able to piece together this information....so realize the years listed in it happen years ago and were written by a people who lived in the area!

This mill is one of the old landmarks which our citizens will regret to see pass away.  Some years ago, an old saw mill stood upon the site, which was purchased by Alpheus Morse and John Brown.  They also obtained land of Simeon Chubbuck , …land upon which to erect and build bogs and to flow water into the pond.  In 1849, they built and put into operation the well-known Alderbrook Woolen Mills.  (Simeon Chubbuck was the grandfather of famous women author Emily Chubbuck, Fanny Forester..she was born in his cabin)

It was a wooden structure four stories high.  They built a fine boarding house, a cottage or two and the Long Block, a long building.  The factory was in the shadow of the northern mill, a very pretty location.  The Mill employed some 75 employees and manufactured some of the best quality cashmere and doeskin.  

In 1856, the firm failed, after which Alpheus Morse effected an arrangement and continued the business.  During the war, he made the army and navy blues, his goods being in such demand in the early years of the war that much of the time the works were run night and day.  Mr. Morse ran the mill with the cooperation of different individuals with varied success until 1874 or ‘75, during which time he built three cottages on the terrace overlooking the sheet of water.  

In 1876, the premises were purchased at a mortgage sale by Messrs. Lakey & Co., who sold to D.E. Darrow and Philo Walden in 1879.  Darrow and Walden soon after removed two stories of the upright part of the mill, putting in a new roof and otherwise repaired it.  The Long Block had become a ruin nearly ready to fall when they removed it. 

 

In 1883, they leased the mill to John Klock from St. Johnsville, N.Y., for paperboard manufacture.  Later, James Healey from the same place became associated with him.  Last year, Klock and Healey sold their interest to Messrs. Howe and Son.  

The cottages on the terrace have all been sold to different individuals, and now all of the buildings belonging to the mill property, all that is left, are the wool house and the boarding house.  

Fifty years ago, before there was ever sound of factory bell, hum of wheels or clash of looms in Alderbrook dell, it was the delightful home of Emily Chubbuck, the gifted “Fanny Forester.”  Here with her father and mother, her brothers and sisters, she lived her free joyous childhood – amid the wild picturesque beauty of nature, inhaled the breath of poetry…and wrote some of her most charming stories.  

The stories of busy enterprises silenced the Muse and for more than a third of a century held away.  The actors in the drama and their works are low in the dust; and should the pristine romantic beauty and poetic atmosphere of Alderbrook return to it, then this third of a century is simply bridged over by the force that evolves destiny; a period, a scene, fallen into oblivion…dead and buried.

**And so it is today...back to the wild pristine slumber of the ages…

Locust Grove and another Eaton Woman Ann Eliza Morse

I thought I would put this up as an addition to last weeks story on the women of the Morse family.  This is on Locust Hill and a spot that was located on Lebnon Hill Road just above Mill Street that was once the Skaneateles Turnpike.  It from a biography on her after her death.

Ann Eliza Morse, daughter of Calvin and Belinda (Gardiner) Morse, was born in Eaton, N.Y.

 Two favorite names of her early home, Locust Grove and The Vinery, bear witness to her healthy and happy surrounds, with her companionship of trees, birds and flowers.

Economy and industry, intelligence and piety, strength and intelligence pervaded by deep affection, were the molding influences of her young life. Her education was conducted at home, in private schools, and in Hamilton Academy until 1848, when at the age of seventeen, she became a pupil of Troy Seminary, in whose stimulating intellectual atmosphere she was an eager and responsive student, graduating in 1850.

 In the autumn of the same year she went as a teacher to Chestnut Street Seminary, where she continued eight years.  Carrying the enthusiasm of her school life into her new duties, her success in teaching was assured from the first.  Definite and clear in the classroom, her own interest awakened that of her pupils.

 At the opening of Vassar College, President Raymond, who had known her from childhood, (she being a favorite cousin of Mrs. Raymond), invited her to become a member of his family, as his assistant.

 She had an official connection with the College until the second year, when she was appointed assistant to Miss Lyman, the Lady Principal.  She retained this position during fourteen years, until her impaired health compelled her retirement in 1880.  Her subsequent life was that of an invalid, but her fortitude and Christian submission glorified even these years of discipline and suffering.

 Although the brief intervals she was literally “a shut in,” she was not  inactive.  Aided by her niece and constant companion, Miss Jessica Cone, editor of “Scenes from the Life of Christ,” (the fruit of their united labors), there was scarcely an interruption in their study of history, biography, literature, art, and current events.  A glimpse of their work may be found in the paragraph we quote from a letter written in 1892:

 “We have a very busy winter planned, one item of which is a ‘Ladies’ Reading Circle,’ for which careful preparation is indicated by program.  Our first month was devoted to Lowell, the second to George W. Curtis, to be followed by Whittier and Tennyson.  There is no monotony or dullness in our quiet, country-home lives.  These weekly readings are full of earnest interest, and when we hear the constant testimony, ‘How elevating they are,’ we are more than satisfied.”

 Of this torch of knowledge, kindled and kept burning in this little inland village, one can but say, “how far that little candle throws his beams.”

 Interwoven with all other reading and study was that of the Book of Books.  She rarely alluded to excluded enjoyments, but in one letter her full heart finds the following utterance: “I fear I must give up a Bible Class of young men, in which I am more interested than in any other work I am doing.”  Notwithstanding her physical limitations, the quiet home of Miss Morse was a cheerful one.

 In her pretty vine-covered cottage, the house in which her parents lived and died, she with her happy memories was an inspiration and benediction to others.

Famous Women buried in Eaton Cemetery

This week I have been reviewing the book I did for the Eaton Village Cemetery as a “fund Raiser” I had the opportunity to think about a great number of women who survived the arduous journeys from other Northeastern areas to Eaton in the times of settlement.  Women, who bore children, took care of the family and worked side by side with their husbands clearing land and starting a new life.

Certainly among the most famous is Eunice Bigelow Morse of the famous Stowe-Bigelow -Morse families of Natick, Massachusetts.  Eunice came with her husband Joseph, and young children to a place that would become not only home to her but to generations of her family.

A relative Harriet Beecher Stowe in a book titled “Old Town Folks”, forever immortalized Eunice’s family.  Many believed the story was written by Harriet's husband Calvin Ellis Stowe for his family… the Stowe’s… However, when Harriet married Callvin she married into the same family as her grandmother. * It is interesting to note that the Eaton Museum has the first edition of Hearth & Home with the first installment of that book inside…a newspaper kept untouched by Eunice Morse.  

The museum also has Eunice’s rocker and the cradle she used for what became the famous Morse brood.  The Natick crowd (Old Town Folks) also included other Morses…crab (Hezekiah Morse”, Grandpa Stowe of Eaton’s Stow Tavern…. and many more.

From Luna Hammond’s History in part:    

 Joseph (Eunice)  removed to Eaton in 1796 from Natick… Joseph Morse was the founder of Eaton village, and his sons have been identified with nearly all of its business interests. These sons were named as follows: Ellis,  whose biographical sketch appears in the chapter relating to Eaton, Joseph, who moved to Pennsylvania served in the Legislature of that State, and also became judge of the County Courts; Calvin, who was an elected member of the Legislature from Madison County in 1842, and has held municipal offices in town and county; Alpheus, who has been a merchant and scientific farmer, and for many years past, manufacturer, being proprietor of the Alderbrook Woolen Mill; and Bigelow, who was a respected citizen of Fabius, Onondaga County. Eunice, the eldest daughter of Joseph More, married Dr. James Pratt the pioneer physician of Eaton.   After her husband's death, she with her family removed and began pioneer life again in Palmyra, Mo.  She was a woman of indomitable will and great energy of character.

     The descendants of Joseph (and Eunice) Morse have, many of them, distinguished themselves in various positions. Gen. Henry B. Morse entered the late war as Captain of the 114th Reg. N. Y. V., was promoted to the office of Colonel, and subsequently, for meritorious services, was breveted Brigadier-General in the army of the southwest. He is grandson of Joseph Morse; as also is the Rev. Andrew Morse, who as a young man was a missionary to Siam and then become the Chaplain of the U S Treasury and friends with Abraham Lincoln,. Gardner Morse, who was member of the Legislature in 1866, Walter, a member of the manufacturing firm of Wood, Tabor & Morse, George E., a prominent citizen interested in the schools and who founded the Eaton Village Cemetery Association, and Alfred, who bravely gave his life for the Union cause at the battle of Winchester,Va. ; all these being sons of Ellis Morse. Darwin and Frank B. Morse, merchants at Eaton village, Allie Morse Burchard whose husband formed the Chenango Breeder’s Association, Children of Bigelow, are grandsons of Joseph Morse. Two grand-daughters, Belinda and Eliza, daughters of Calvin, have been conspicuous as teachers, the latter being now assistant Principal of Vassar Female College.

     Hezekiah Morse, the third of the pioneer brothers, came to Eaton in 1806. His children are scattered and many of them dead.   One of his sons. Alpha was for many years a prominent manufacturer of Eaton.  Another son, Elijah, who is now dead, was a wealthy farmer of Eaton. A grand-daughter is wife of  Rev. John Raymond, President of Vassar Female College, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. Albert H. Morse, a prominent citizen of Eaton is also a grandson, being son of Elijah. H. B. Morse, youngest son of Hezekiah, is a scientific and successful farmer of Norwich, N. Y. (and this is just and excerpt) 

What a family… and that isn’t all of them and their accomplishments.  The very road today’s Eaton Village Cemetery is located on (Landon Road) was once the Great Skaneateles Turnpike a road that it is claimed would not have been built except for Joseph and Ellis who controlled 51 percent of the stock investment… an investment they made of $30,000 in 1810… think about it.

This fall I will be giving a cemetery tour to support the Eaton Village Cemetery Association and help Eaton celebrate History and all of those pioneer women whose husbands and children made our area a wonderful piece of rural Americana! 

*Interestingly Luna Hammond the historian and her famous mother Deidamia Button Chase (the first female physician of Madison County) and her famous brood are also buried in the cemetery. Almost all of the Morse family is buried in the Eaton Cemetery including the Morse – Motts. Did you know that Luna's brother Julius was the historian for the US Treasury in Washington DC

https://youtu.be/UAqHMHNAWfg?si=xzqDnABLyLYRRgoc

Women's Right to vote, History and Madison County

What do history junkies do for Election Day…what else ...visit historic landmarks attached to elections and a few years ago I did just that!  I decided to take a spin to Rochester and visit the Susan B. Anthony House!

Few people are well versed in the reality of Anthony’s struggle for the rights of not only women to vote, but for all the rights of every individual citizen of the United States of America.  Born a Quaker, Anthony used these learned values and hard work to accomplish her goals.  

The Anthony family moved to New York State from Mass. (where Anthony was born) after the failure of her father’s business.  She eventually went into teaching not wanting to marry and become a “drudge or a doll” teaching for years in Canajoharie.... until making a decision that she needed more in her life.  Moving back to her father’s farm near Rochester, she was given the job of running it. 

The farm was a place of some wonder as abolitionists and free thinkers often visited and stirred Anthony with their stories and no doubt brought her to her goal in life... which was rights and equality for all.

Banding with a newfound friend and confidant Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she found the voice to her drive and together the two women set out to change the world, and they did.   From temperance, to women’s married rights, to abolition and then on to voting suffrage, they tirelessly worked to give all citizens regardless of color, race or sex the rights they were supposedly given by the Constitution of the United States.

Sadly, neither lived to see their work on women’s right to vote come to fruition.  

Anthony did vote once after the 14^th Amendment gave the right to vote to the citizens of the United States,  was promptly arrested and sent to trial.  When a fair trail could not be held in Monroe County because Anthony had spoken about it in every village and town, the trial was moved to the Ontario County Courthouse in Canandaigua..

So for fun we visited the Ontario County Courthouse.  I had visited it once before to see the Celebration for the continual yearly reestablishment of the Treaty of 1794... and the polishing of the “Silver Covenant Chain” between the US Government and the Iroquois Confederacy.    

And during that ceremony…..lo and behold a Quaker speaker spoke on the history of the courthouse, the occasion, and sure enough Susan B. Anthony.  She informed those gathered that this courthouse was the place that Anthony was tried for her crime of voting for President of the United States….could this happen again ladies?

In Norm Dann’s book “Practical Dreamer” on Gerrit Smith,  I found that after Anthony was fined $100 for her crime of voting, and Gerrit Smith sent her $100 to cover the fine!  However Anthony vowed that she would never pay one dollar of the fine and didn’t……So now I wonder what happened to the $100 old Gerrit sent????? Hmm…

 Epilogue...........

When another woman activist was not allowed to vote the women’s rights activist sued (and lost) causing the United States to insert the Amendment stating that only male citizens could vote.

It was not until 14 years after Susan B. Anthony’s death that the Constitution was amended giving women the right to vote. (Suffrage)

This year more than any year Susan B. Anthony’s words struck home: “If we once establish the false principal that United States citizenship does not carry with it the right to vote in every state in the Union, there is no end to the petty freaks and cunning devises that will be resorted to to exclude classes of citizens from the right of suffrage (to vote).

Come on folks lets get out the vote!

Visit this for more information

https://youtu.be/MuL3mnjFlrk?si=iq8dHbMqDGn5fWdJ

Cornelia M Raymond, Louise Burchard, Women's First Vote, Vassar College, and Eaton!

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

Burchard Family

John Raymond met and married Cornelia Morse Raymond while was a student at Colgate, hen wanted to become a missionary... 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 and Harriet's grandmother was a Bjgelow - Stowe Relative and Harriet Married 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..

Women's Rights, Education, Beer and Eaton History!

                                                                    Vassar College

Looking through some history that I wrote about Women's Rights for my new series, I found this information on Women's colleges that wound its way back to Eaton! April 29^th, 1792 stood out as born on this day in history in England was a lad named Matthew Vassar who became a beer mogul of the 1800’s. Yes BEER mogul!

A few years after his birth his family move to America to seek some religious freedom with entertained thoughts of starting a beer business… since both Matthew’s father James and his brother Thomas were English “brewers”.

The two bought some land on the Hudson near Wappinger’s Creek, but it wasn’t until Thomas returned from England with English barley that the family began to brew ale.  

As he grew Matthew did not want to be a tanner, the trade his father chose for him … so he ran away from home to make his own “fortune”.  After many jobs he became successful enough to move back to his family and start making beer with them.  The Vassar Brewery in Poughkeepsie became a large concern whose success was interrupted when fire destroyed the brewery and Matthew’s father was killed by fumes when inspecting the damage.

To make a long story short, after much trial and tribulation, Matthew became rich and began a climb that went from owning a huge beer business to incorporating the Poughkeepsie Savings Bank in 1831 in which he took a prominent lead, and the formation of the Poughkeepsie Whaling Company in 1832, of which he was a subscriber/shareholder, and a director and a trustee of the young city of Poughkeepsie.  He also ran to a brick making business and in 1842 took on the development of the Hudson River Railroad to get his beer to New York City when the Hudson froze over.

When a step-niece, Lydia Booth,  move from Virginia to New York to take the reins of a women’s Seminary school in Poughkeepsie… he helped support her and at that point became enlightened about the importance of education for females. 

After a trip to England and noticing buildings donated with the donors names on them as monuments to them, he decided that a female educational institute would be the perfect thing to put is name to…it would be a lasting honor… So he did… he founded Vassar College… at that time for women.

Not only did he donate close to $500,000, in those days a vast sum, but became intimately involved it its construction and hired Maria Mitchell the astronomer as its first professor.  He toured Europe to learn about women’s education and even gave his house and art collection to the new college which, opened in 1865 to 353 young women.

When he decided to retire as head of the Board of Trustees for Vassar in 1868, and while delivering his farewell speech to the board, Vassar collapsed and died.  They placed him in a chair and after a short silence… one of the other men read the finish of his address as follows…

“And now, gentlemen, in closing these remarks, I would humbly and solemnly implore the Divine Goodness to continue his smiles and favor on your institution, and bestow upon all hearts connected therewith his love and blessings, having peculiarly protected us by his providence through all our college trials for three consecutive years, without a single death in our Board or serious illness or death of one of our pupils within its walls. Wishing you, gentlemen, a continuance of health and happiness, I bid you a cordial and final farewell, thanking you kindly for your official attentions and services, not expecting, from my advanced years and increasing infirmities, to meet with you officially again, and imploring the Divine Goodness to guide and direct you aright in all your counsels and social business relations.”

April 29^th, his birthday is still today celebrated as “Founder’s Day and the college  (now coed) is a major success.  Its main President, John Raymond who taught at Colgate, was married to Cornelia Morse of Eaton and the Morse family girls attended, taught at, and left money to this cause…more on this later… 

PS (Maria Mitchell’s secretary and assistant was one of them.)  I love it when history leads you from one place to another close to home and old Eaton.