Emily Chubbuck AKA Fanny Forrester, Harriet Beecher Stowe and a Lecture

The Summer Lecture Series will come to an end this month ... thank you to all who have attended. I promised to try and do a lecture on Emily Chubbuck, as well as Eaton's famous missionaries with its links to Colgate University that included Nathaniel Kendrick, its incorporators, Jonathan Wade, and the many others. so it will be Aug. 29th at 7 pm at the Old Auction barn.

Most interesting to me was a visitor to the old stone museum who  actually knew who Emily Chubbuck Judson was.  Of course the woman was a writer and journalist... but still…Emily dates back to 1817.

Born in Eaton Emily became a writer of children’s stories under the pen name Fanny Forrester.   She started writing articles for the newspapers and put them together as a book of famous short tales about the Eatonbrook .  The Eatonbrook is a little stream still runs today through Eaton and behind the Old Town Museum today.  Then it was call the Alderbrook and her stories of  “Alderbrook Tales” put together as book sold very well.  Emily of course became famous in the mid-1840s when she married Adoniram Judson the American Missionary to Burma.  Her life and her writings about Judson’s earlier wife made quite an impact on the Baptist world in her time.

Certainly the most famous woman writer of her time and a woman credited with moving America toward abolition was Harriet Beecher Stowe.  The Old Town Museum contains information on her family and her husband’s family as they are directly related to the Stowes and Morse-Bigelows who settled Eaton.

Harriet’s book “Uncle Tom’s Cabin, like Chubbuck’s “Alderbrook Tales”, was also a serial book first carried in the periodical "National Era".  Later as an actual book it was translated into different languages and became a best seller in many countries.  In the United States the only book that sold more copies in its day was the Bible.  In its first year it sold 300,000 copies here in the USA and 200,000 copies in England.  It effected a change that some feel led to the Civil War.  It certainly stirred the sentiment of a great swath of the country toward abolition.

Another woman later did the same thing with her only actual full-length novel, a book in part based on an actual experience that happened in her early life called “To Kill A Mocking Bird”.

With the release of this book… Harper Lee became an overnight sensation.  The 1960 book won her the Pulitzer Prize and was rated in England by librarians as “a book every adult should read”.  The story in a way contributed to social change since it addressed race relations, equality and life in the “Deep South”... among other things.  A book used in classrooms and made into a movie…it has never been out of print.

So women…get out your pens…start writing…there are a whole lot of social issues that need to be addressed today.  Remember it only takes one book to make a difference.  Wish I could make a difference with my blog…but if I got someone else to write the big book…. I will have.  SO WRITE!

Here is a video clip of a famous part of the movie!

Eaton's Church turns 180 years old........Happy Birthday!

Today is a special day in Eaton, it is the day the current Eaton Church was dedicated on June 6^th in 1833.  Its 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.

The step which bore the inscription still sits in front of the church, but has been broken up and can no longer be read.  But the churches history has followed that of the Eaton Hamlet and has in fact helped the history of the United States. 

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, a friend of Gerrit Smith and a noted abolitionist.  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.

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.

One of the best stories I have about the church is one that ended up involving me.  Melville Landon wrote a story on Mr. Wood and the Rev. Cleveland for one of his books. In the story Mr. Wood is hawking hymnals for sale in the back of the church while Rev. Cleveland was announcing the following weeks Baptism Service for children.  Wood only had one child and so when the minister said for the parishioners to bring their children… Mr. Wood piped up, thinking he was talking about the hymnal that “they could have as many as they wanted for 50 cents each.”

I wrote about this story for the Mid-York Weekly newspaper and the next week I received a package from Pennsylvania…it was the sermon handwritten that Rev. Cleveland delivered that day!...

History always returns to Eaton…so visit the museum soon and see the document for yourself…we are going to be open on Sundays 1-3 pm in the summer.

Here's a video of the church!

A Mother, a slave, and a speaker for human rights - Sojourner Truth!

I was on Facebook today and found a quote posted with picture of a woman I greatly admired when I was much younger. 

The Quote

Her name was Isabelle Baumfree, born in 1797, into slavery, right here in the State of New York.   Yes, New York …and as a young person I found that hard to believe because of course, the south is where the slaves were.

Isabella spoke Dutch since a New York Dutch family owned her… (Dutch...that blew my mind as a kid) She was eventually sold with sheep for $100 and started her family by being forced to marry a man she did not love.  The man she loved was a slave who belong to another slave owner and if they had children - they would have been his owner’s property. 

In her own biography she tells of the terrible beatings she received, being sold, of her poor children being sold and of finally being promised her freedom in 1826 for an amount of work.  When her owner reneged on the deal, she ran away with her young child Sophia and found refuge with a man and wife who paid the $20 for work she supposedly still owned her former owner. (New York laws for abolition took effect on July 4, 1827)

When she learned that her 5 years old son Peter (she had to leave behind) had been illegally sold south, she took the issue to court. This case was one of the first in which a black woman challenged a white man in a United States court, and she won.

She says the “Spirit” came to her one day and she decided to go out and preach for abolition and women’s rights - among many other issues.  The name she took would become well known in American history…she chose Sojourner Truth.

Sojourner Truth became a great public speaker and became friends with all of the luminaries of abolition from Wendell Phillips to William Lloyd Garrison.  She met Presidents... and she vigorously spoke for Women’s Rights - especially for black women after black men were given the vote and so much more.  Reading some of her quotes today is totally enjoyable since she spoke the “Truth”-plainly and out front! (Maybe why I am so outspoken some times.)

"Truth is powerful, and it prevails."

                                                                                

   – Sojourner Truth