Happy Fourth Everyone!

 Eaton 4th of July Field Days in a Bustling Town

The best remembered and photographed times in Eaton were the “field days” held yearly to celebrate the Fourth of July.  This community, born out of Revolutionary blood felt it a duty to put on big yearly celebration. 

The big day usually started with cannon volley, which in later years is remembered as Patty Miles “firing” his anvil.  This was done by filling the hole in the bottom of the anvil with black powder and setting it off.  Any late sleepers would be awakened if their children had not already forced them out of bed in their excitement to get downtown.

Horse racing was part of the day and baseball games were played in different fields around town, big rivals for Eaton’s team was the Bouckville Bucks.  Food was available everywhere from the churches where the ladies aid put on a dinner, to the food stands on Main Street (front street) and the hotels, some brought their own lunches, but everybody ate.

The "Town" filled with music with people listening, especially when the Eaton Military Band played. In the evening there was always a dance that was well attended at the opera house in town, and the Rebekah Lodge usually served coffee to the attendees, with the dance continuing until midnight.

By the 1920’s, the world was at war; the steam engine plant was closing, water power had given away to electricity, woolen mills were closed, the Chenango Canal had ceased to be a transportation route and was only used to fill the Erie Canal, the “Great Depression” was on and the march to the city for work began.
 

No more does the anvil fire, and only once every three years is there a parade in Eaton and “History Day” is now on Memorial Day,  (instead of Field Day on the Fourth of July). In Eaton, however the memories live on in this rural community, remembered most of all for its once glorious past replete with famous Eatonites, famous inventions and stories of the wars. Eaton like so many of its rural counterparts has gone to Sleep!

Bad Weather and Trouble is nothing new for the Museum!

I found this blog from 2013 and laughed as I read about all the troubles we had opening the museum in 2013 on River Road!  We had just gotten the wiring done for the second time...READ ON.... and as usual the weather did not cooperate....I laughed and thought this would be a great republish so everyone would know what an ordeal this has been for ME to keep it running!!! 

But Come on out to the museum on Sunday and join us!

2013...This has been another wild week of weather...unbelievable it was 33 this morning!!!  I am still trying to get caught up for our big museum opening.  Sure hope Monday is nice…

After fighting with my poor old PC I gave up and transferred the documentary I was working on to the Apple and from there it blossomed into more trouble.  

Everyone thinks that the country is quiet…ha!  I had to try and get up at 2 in the morning to record the voice over for the documentary on Leland and believe me every so often I still heard a truck rumble through town and of course, into my voice over.  Then my little video camera took a turn for the worse…rule 1 - never take your video camera on to Fourth Lake in a Kayak.   But all and all.. the documentary is together without a studio (which I need terribly) and without using my large camera in a space that is too small and…fighting the fact that sound travels for miles…and farther.

I then called the group together to set up the canopy frame that had been twisted into a pretzel by the storm that dropped a tree on the museum and had punched a hole in the roof.  It took three people exerting all their weight to bend that thing into submission.  Then the poles that hold it up had to be shortened to eliminate the bent ends….Now you say flimsy metal right?  Wrong!  It is 1 1/2 inch steel pipe.  Luckily I have a plumber on Front Street who came over and in a few minutes eliminated the problem. 

Then on to the big problem….it is 33 degrees outside and they are predicting cold nights like this for the weekend!  So tomorrow it is get propane and set it up to heat building in the morning of our big “Event”!

Humorously… the person who is supposed to bring the ice cream  for the event emailed that maybe she should bring hot coffee and tea!  Also  said, “Who do you think is going to want “Ice cream”!  Hmm….

Lastly, but more importantly, since the tree also took out my electric service for the second time and I have not reconnected because of money…the generator won’t start!  So as a sidelight….generator repair 101!

Well there is one thing for certain …we are going to celebrate history!  And even though the historian who has only had 3 hours of sleep a night for two weeks is sleepy…the Revolutionary re-enactors will wake her up when their cannon fires the first volley of “Remembrance” behind the museum on Monday!

So come out and help us celebrate a Museum Opening, Revolutionary War Veteran’s and one of our founding father’s here in Eaton…Col. William Leland whose sword will be in the museum to liven things up!

Eaton’s Old Town Museum is located on River Road in Eaton, NY.  For more information visit www.historystarproductions.com.

History Shines at the Eaton Museum

             This Sunday, June 29,  we will have our 30th Anniversary Celebration.

We are hoping the weather will cooperate this time.  To all those hit by the storms last Sunday like us... we wish you well.  The cake was frozen and will come out rain or shine....Please join us!

The Old Town of Eaton Museum will be hosting its 30th Anniversary on Sunday with a special treat.  Artist of note, Virginia Keith's portrait of Mary will be unveiled at the museum at 1:30 during an award ceremony.  The oil portrait will be donated to the museum by the artist.

Virginia Keith hails from the Town of Brookfield, also in Madison 

County, where both her parents served as Town Historians. Virginia has 

also served on the Board of the Brookfield Historical Society. She has 

painted as a hobby her whole life, but it wasn't until 2015 that she 

studied portrait painting.

During the initial COVID 19 shutdown, a group of five Mohawk Valley area 

women, who had studied portraiture together at Munson in Utica, won a 

commission from the Women's Fund of Central New York to Commemorate the 

100th anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment granting women 

the right to vote.

This effort was immediately followed up by a Commitment to paint a 

collection of portraits of significant and highly accomplished local 

women. The show called Women Paint Women hung in the public Library in 

Utica and in the Arts Center in little Falls, and was commemorated in a 

book by the same name.

Virginia chose to portray Mary Messere for her contributions to the 

collection and preservation of local history. As this painting is done 

with the techniques of the European masters, it is hope to serve as a 

loving picture of Eaton's History Champion for many, many decades to come.

----------------------------------------

Virginia Keith currently lives in Waterville NY and can be reached at 

<vskeith@twcny.rr.com>

Memories, Life, Memorable Birthday Parties

I watched an old movie the other night, something I seldom do.  The movie was “The Way We Were” and what I found most interesting was the mini documentary that went along with the movie.  The most part that interested me most was the discussion of finding the right song.   They needed a song that would transport the viewer back to memories.  

                                                           Family Birthday Party!

The composer chosen for the job was Marvin Hamlisch and the wordsmiths… the Bergman’s.   They describe in the documentary their work to craft the perfect “vehicle” to set the mood.  They said the title, “The Way We Were” was wonderful all in itself, but that they had the first line originally “daydreams light the corners of my mind”.    When they presented the song to Barbra Streisand she changed… one note and one word, a word that became the most important change …  the word daydreams to “Memories”.

The song won the 1973 Academy Award for best song in a movie, a Golden Globe and became one of the songs of the century!   To this day I am sure many of us enter a little piece of reverie as we listen to it… since memories are a haunting part of our life; they are something that comes back to us …sometimes good, sometimes bad…sometimes happy…sometimes sad.

My memories seem to start in the  Spring, which is supposed to be a new beginning, a time of rebirth when the earth wakes from the sleep of winter.  The sap has started to run and the great giants on the hill have started to sprout buds that will soon bring leaves that will last until fall’s last call.  Added to this are my memories of the many summer days spent by the lake, by the glimmering water, with the brush of soft sand against my feet when I walked the shore dreaming of the future.  Never expecting it to be where I am today.

Spring for me brings both my best memories and my saddest memoires. 

My best are the many childhood weekends around Easter… since most members of my family shared April time birthdays.  Grandmother, grandfather, aunts, uncles, mom, dad, myself… these birthdays all turned into weekend parties, one after another.  Parties where everyone got together and cousins played at life.  Easter meant seeing some cousins from a long distance that came to the city to visit Grandma.  These were fun times to be sure.

Then things changed and I moved to the country where – ironically - all of the new neighbors shared April birthdays and the parties began again.  

Those times and people have all passed as well… and I am left here with only memories of them.  Lingering sad memories… as death end life.  In the past some of my best friends died on the three days around my birthday… and their memories though certainly fond ones, are wonderful… but they are sad.   They leave me with a feeling of being alone…. like sad memories all of my family who are no longer here.  

The wise man said that you can never go back… you can only go forward.  And so we must… we can only relive that past as “Memories” that light the corners of our mind.

A Special Sunday - 30 years & Leland History

The Old Town of Eaton Museum located on River Road in Eaton... will be open for Summer's first weekend..Sunday, June 22nd from 1to 3pm and will be celebrating 30 years of Eatons History group. For the occasion we will be sporting a new display with items belonging to the Leland Family and a copy of the deed signed by Col. William Smith and his wife.  Refreshments will be served and we will be honoring a couple of the groups hard workers.

Joshua Leland came to Eaton in 1792 - 1793 with friends Benjamin Morse and John Morris from Sherburne, Massachusetts.  The land that was opening up for sale in those days would have been the “frontier”, or “Indian Country.”  Leland made a shelter or rudimentary house and later returned with his wife and family. 

They became stuck in the mud at what would become his later home near today’s Leland Pond.  Mrs. Hammond writes that he had to fetch Benjamin and John to help him cross the Chenango, and come to today’s English Avenue in Eaton.  He and his family are recorded as living in a three-sided abode with their children and animals the first winter.

Mrs. Hammond’s History of Madison County claims that it was near what is today’s Caleb Dunbar’s House marked by a NYS Historic Marker.  Leland kept his house open to the public as a tavern and accommodation for travelers.  I believe he built the house that he sold to Samuel Sinclair and that it is Sinclair who sold the property to Caleb Dunbar. This would explain why it was hard to trace the original deed totally.

Humorously, the deed to most of the parcel of land known as Eaton today was found 131 years later (a sheepskin deed) and finally filed in Madison County.  The original deed would have been registered prior to 1806 in Chenango County, as this land was in Chenango County until when it was parceled off as a separate county.

The house was passed back and forth in the Dunbar Family to Thaxter, George and Henry until the 1900’s when it was sold on a tax deed. Many original papers that belonged to Col. Leland were found in the house including a parcel of information on the Kent family another of one of the earliest settlers who lived above this land on today’s Sanford Road.

Leland sold his interest in this area to Joseph Morse and moved to the location of the Leland Marker at the Ponds.  Leland had teased while living on English Avenue that his wife was the “fairest woman” east of the Chenango and of course… she was the first white woman.

*The dead is restored and is located at the Madison Country Courthouse and is signed by Col. William Smith and his wife Abigail Adams Smith,  President Adams daughter. See previous articles.

Muller Hill and the Old French Lilacs

This week in Eaton behind my house is an ancient "what locals called a French Lilac."  In the. old days people would go up to Muller Hill for picnics to view what was the home of a French noble called Louis Anthe Muller.  While there they would snip pieces of these beautiful plants and take them home as a remembrance to plant near their house, and rumor has it that mine is one off those!

Many fugitives from the ”Rein of Terror” actually came to New York State, since Americans welcomed the French who helped them win their independence from England in the Revolutionary War. 

Large numbers of French royalty and their courtiers moved into upper New York State and one who called himself Louis Muller settled here in our area.  It was said that he often stopped in his journeys at the old Sage Tavern in Eaton. My Lilac shown!

One of the Chenango Twenty Towns, Georgetown was formed from the two adjoining towns of DeRuyter and Cazenovia that were originally named Tromptown and Roadtown. Within its vast forest borders came a mysterious gentleman by the name of Louis Anthe Muller who in 1808 purchased 2,700 acres of land and built his “Muller Mansion.”

Through the years his true identity has lured people and historians who have worked diligently to try                         MY     and solve the mystery. Muller Mansion was built like a fortress from slabs of cherry wood that were 11 feet high and up to 12 inches in thickness. The structure (house) was massive for its day measuring approximately 30 by 70 feet and had built into it what many described as an escape-way in the basement.

Some believe Muller was Charles X in hiding, others think that he was a much wanted military escapee of the “Reign of Terror” in France and an enemy of Napoleon… whatever the case the truth has never been known without question. 

Muller had large numbers of workmen (as many as 150) planting, cultivating and stocking with game and fish the area around his Mansion… and to support his employees, a community was erected nearby called Bronder Hollow. All of his business was paid in gold. Visitors would come and hunt… however all stated that Muller always traveled with two loaded pistols and an armed guard! 

Muller returned to France after Napoleon's removal leaving a wife in New York City.  He returned only once to his Georgetown estate where he found his mansion in ruin, pillaged by the man he left in charge of it.  The remains of the Muller Mansion that brought early tourists to see it in the late 1800's burned in 1912.

Today walking tours of the area are given as it has become part of the Muller Hill State Forest - once a reforestation project of the CCC, and a historic marker lies off Muller Hill Road, a seasonal road. Once you are atop Muller Hill in the quiet of the thick underbrush and forest it is hard to try to envision a palatial habitat fit for a gentleman or a King, but it was there. 

History that Eaton and Madison County Never Knew

While working on a new book named 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???

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.