I have had so many cats that have wandered in to get a free meal and in many cases help, I can't remember them all.! One such cat is "Whitie", he is mostly white and is mostly deaf. He wandered in with blood on him and was starving. Nobody claimed the poor fellow and all he wanted was food and a place to sleep! It was the dead of winter this past year and I found he would hide on the back porch under the chair,,,it was freezing out there.
This summer he has turned into a good looking white cat but only wants to eat and be in the house, which is driving my house cats crazy. What I need is to find a home for him. He is fixed now and someone would have a great, friendly, and very gentle cat. Humorously, Whitie is the opposite of my blind black cat Willie... so I wondered if maybe we should start a "disabled cat ranch" down here!
Please if you can find a home for White you will have no trouble... only a food bill and I can have a happy home again in my kitchen! The thing that worries me the most is the upcoming winter weather as once again the porch will be freezing cold and an electric heater will be unaffordable with this years electric rates.
It reminds me of "The Cat who came to Christmas" by Cleveland Amory. I am the "Curmudgeon" that seems to always gets stuck feeling sorry for them, mumbles under my breath, and then finds love from them... Animals unlike people who want everything...new cars, fancy phones, overpriced houses... only want a home and food...and I might add "...they show much love back.
This is the reason we founded our "not for profit. 4 Community Cats Inc". This is our way of helping to control the animal population in our little area and to put a website out with information on vets, neutering and spaying, and health tips..Please help us help the community and cats like White!
4CommunityCats.Inc. We have a go Fund Me Page or you can mail check to 4 Community Cats Inc in care of 5823 Brooklyn Street, Eaton, NY. https://gofund.me/7356f605
This week has been tough for me with the hot weather and the mess I have been cleaning up after the flood! The smelly mess from the runoff behind my house has caused me much unneeded work and stress...just getting rid of the smelly runoff mud from back yard items like rugs and chairs has taken a toll on me. I lost my bridge to the backyard and it finally dried off enough for me to build a replacement! The cats that I shelter and feed have done alright...thank God!
Our cat group is hoping by putting up a GoFundMe Page that we will be able to eliminate new problems that have shown up in the form of young cats that have been left in town and who need to be fixed.. if not they will provide the area with more! Neutering and spaying has cost so much that many just have given up trying to find help and have just dumped some off! Kittens are fun to play with but they become cats too soon who will be bring you kittens. Male cats need to be fixed to prevent kittens as well as female cats many males are lost when they rake off to find females. Roaming males have accounted for many of the local broods.
I have a cat I have named Willie Williams..who I found curled up in a ball in the middle of the intersection down here in the winter. HIs eyes and his nose were covered in hardened mucus and he was starved. I picked him and brought him to a cage on my porch fed him and gave him some medicine...today Willie is blind for the most part because of this neglect, but he is getting around nicely and loves to sit on my desk while I am working. He actually has become my favorite...I say the Willie Williams is my only "Welch" cat!
I paid for trip to the cheapest vet in the area...who is way too busy and had Willie neutered...it still cost me money that I have very little of since my Christmas Eve house fire, the two tree tragedy of last fall and this flood!
The truth is the whole area has been besieged by kittens and drop off young cats just go on line and read some of the stories on NEXT DOOR or Facebook. So my plea... if you can donate even $5 dollars to our not for profit "4 Community Cats Inc." I will be so grateful and so will your neighbors when they don't find a bunch of kittens near their house or in their back yard and have to decide to try and do something!
Below is a link to out Go Fund Me page or you can write a check to 4 Community Cats Inc. c/o 5823 Brooklyn Street Eaton, NY
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!
With the Republican Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin this week I remembered another piece of Eaton History! The young man who lived in the Eaton - Munnsvill-Pratts Hollow area with his family and became one of the most remembered men of Wisconsin....William Dempster Hoard.
So.... when traveling on Route 46 from Oneida to Hamilton you might pass a beautiful, now deserted stone building on the side of the road. Missing windows and doors… it sits as reminder of Eaton & Munnsville’s past, a past that included many famous people and famous products. One such man was born in the building and passed his childhood there observing the area and interested in its development, his name was William Dempster Hoard.
Hoard spent many hours observing the growing of hops that was a mainstay crop during his formative years; a crop that depleted the already thin soil of this hilly Madison County, NY area. The farmers who lost their fortunes and farms to this fickle crop, wiped out by blight and the commodity market, changed to milk production and Holstein–Friesian cattle that were imported from Holland.
The cows were a needed agricultural addition that was - with its bi-product of manure - an enhancement of the soil and a new way of life for this Madison county, NY area. Hoard as a young man moved to Wisconsin in the westward exodus of the 1800’s and landed in an area that also had agricultural problems much like his former home. One day siting on a hillside noting the farmers going out of business or struggling, he came up with the idea of making the same change to cows, an idea that made Wisconsin the “Dairy State” for many years.
Hoard also started Hoard’s Dairyman’s Journal that gave information to farmers on dairy practices. He is considered the father of the refrigerated railcar that was needed to ship milk to markets at a great distance and today his drawings of the perfect barn have been copied by Cornell University. His motto was that happy cows produced more milk and that entering his dairy you were to treat his cows like “mothers” with kindness and respect.
In his lifetime he became the Governor of Wisconsin and helped bring abolition to the state, staunchly supporting legislation to accompany his beliefs.Today Madison County, NY is still an agricultural county and much of what was learned by our founding dairy farmer’s came out of Hoard’s Journal!
I Have at the museum a wonderful letter he wrote about attending school at Eaton's Pine Woods School. Charming remembrance of the one room school.
With all the political slop on TV and the internet... and the discussion on women's rights, something that has been getting ridiculous.
Women fought hard to be part of the voting public. Women fought for rights in the work place. Did you know that uncooperative wives were often sent to the poor house or asylum?? True...Woman should have autonomy over their lives and their bodies...so I have been thinking about the fact that I have been lucky enough to travel around New York State…see beautiful scenery…learn interesting history…and get to know people from the past and how things today got to be.
Thinking about my past year’s travels brought me a re-introduction of thoughts on a grand lady of note, Eleanor Roosevelt. On a visit to Hyde Park and her home Val Kill, I was treated to a video documentary on her life..and what a life it was.
Just this past week I received a card with one of Eleanor’s quotes on it...not the kind of quote you would expect, but for Eleanor Roosevelt one cannot expect the normal -just the truthful, and in some cases humorous.
The card came with this quote from Eleanor - it read: “I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalog: ‘NO good in a bed, but fine against a wall.’”
The grand dame of the democrats was a self-made person of sorts - putting herself into the role of First Lady as no other had done before her. She was a politician who stumped for her husband and an activist who worked diligently for the United Nations and for human rights...in fact she was a person who understood more than any of her collogues then… that “women’s rights” were a necessity in the modern world and in America.
More than ever we need a person like Eleanor to guide us through the political muckery of today, a person who has the ability to show the world that human rights are needed by all people, especially in this world that is becoming smaller each and every day.
Perhaps she was successful because she was no beauty queen - only a woman of many faces…. mother...wife…friend...writer...activist….
They called her the “first lady (citizen) of the world”...and that she was…and she was a "rose of a different color!"
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! Happy Fourth America! Every community needs a Band!
I realize that I have been tardy in getting some new history blogs out...but I have also been struggling along trying to repair my house after the fire and get our new 501 3c started.
This week has been good for my brain and while watching the TV about the rising "White Nationalism" and Civil War era legislation with voter suppression .. I was reminded of an old story about Eaton. The story actually revolves around the house next to the museum on River Road, the road that was once called Water Street. The building is one of the oldest in town and was owned during the period before and after the Civil War by the Leach family. It is "Henry" I believe who served in the Confederate Army while the rest of the town for the most part was pro North.
Small towns in those days stuck together in a more cohesive way than today I guess... and after the War had passed, it is said that on all holidays and during parades old Mr. Leach would don his Confederate uniform and march in the parade with the many members of the GAR. Both sides it is noted paraded up and down the streets with pride. As a matter of fact... it wrote Mr. Leach into history and he has become part of the "Tales told of Old Eaton"... ones that you can enjoy.
Curiously, when redoing the museum we held a very large opening day celebration... and Chris Staudt with whom I bought the building and refurbished it to become the museum for Eaton... invited friends and family down for the occasion.
Chris' dad came down and toured...after the crowd had gone home and as he was leaving, he looked up at the American flag flying over the door, he glanced across the yard to the Leach house and said... "You really need a Confederate Flg flying here also". To this day I wonder if old Mr. Leach was around giving us a hint of his past... could be I guess.... after all it was Memorial Day!
The concept of Eaton Day arose from Eaton's traditional 4th July Celebration which had been taken over by Hamilton recent years. In "the Old Days" it was a celebration of honoring the dead warriors, remembering the past and enjoying community, today Eaton's little history group has tried to keep that spirit alive on Memorial Day Monday's.
I hope everyone will come out and visit what has become the Old Town of Eaton Museum, currently owned and run by the not- for- profit museum group Old Town Folks. Of great interest... the new group that has formed to help support it is...Friends of the Old Town of Eaton Museum.
The group has officially become a recognized charity so all donations to it are are tax deductible. The museum is open on very other Sunday most of the year , with a sign board giving the dates and times. of the year until October and we are currently seeking Docents who will help, or anyone interested in giving a hand. Donations may be sent to Friends of the Old Town of Eaton Museum care of 5823 Brooklyn Street, Eaton, NY 13334.
You can contact backstreetmary@ yahoo.com for more information.
Attached is a video I did for Memorial Day honoring the many Revolutionary War Soldiers buried in Eaton Village Cemetery.
This has been a weather nightmare for a good portion of not only our country but of Europe and beyond with floods, tornados, rain and hail. Down here in old Eaton we escaped with just more of rain. We finally realize that the car that hit the museum threw a piece of heavy metal on the roof and pierce it and water poured in. The museum is fine even though the weather has prevented my patching it for a few days. Now Patched!!
My rules:
Rule 1 -”Do not roof on wet days!”
Rule 2- “Do not use wet aluminum ladders!”
So I worked on other projects that have finally come together.
Father’s Day always bring thoughts of my dad who I worked with as a helper as a child and who worked with me when he retired as an adult. He never really swore in mixed company using his famous “NUTS!” as the expletive if something went wrong. He was an ‘officer and gentlemen” as the old saying goes.
He had actually been with Patton at the Battle of the Bulge time and I guess he picked up the phrase “Nuts” from General McAuliffe who was the acting commander of the 101st Airborne at the siege of Bastogne. The general had quite a history..he had flown in on a glider before D Day. When asked to surrender by the Germans who had his troops surrounded, he sent back one of the most famous WWII replies…one word…”NUTS!” Some say it was because he didn't want to be remembered for a swear word..but whatever...
Dad taught me everything about construction and electricity - I remember his saying, ”If you are going to learn to drive a car, you should know how it works and how to fix it”. If I had and older model truck I could still do it today. I even rebuilt an engine in the dead of winter and repaired anything I could.
His motto was...”IF YOU CAN READ AND HAVE THE TOOLS YOU CAN DO ALMOST ANYTHING!” You can!
My favorite story was the time I bought a house in Syracuse and we had to jack up the basement in one part because of a broken beam. I came home from a job…contracting…and dad was in the basement. He told me to hold this timber in place and he worked the jack. We could not lift it…the timber came loose and hit me in the head.
After much effort and two jacks we got it sort of up there. One day I decided to hang a shelf on the wall above the bad area and “bam” I found the reason why we had such a hard time. A former owner had taken a chimney out in the basement and on the outside but not in the middle…. He or she had walled it off!
P.S. The word he used when
the beam came loose and hit me was “Nuts”. I said something different!
THANK YOU TO ALL WHSO HELPED MAKE OUR CHRISTMAS SALE A SUCCESS!
This week we have heard of so many new strays being found in our local area, that I though I would post some information on the problems facing these poor little creatures as fall and winter moves in.
As the days grow shorter and night with its colder temperatures moves in these drop off or left behind animals seek shelter and food. The true unkindness of people is the shortsightedness of the former owner, many of whom think a domestic kitten or cat can seek food like a feral cat whose mother teaches them to hunt.
If we could get some cooperation at spreading the word about the importance of neuter and spaying your animals, we could help with this problem.
Kittens are great for playing with but ownership is a great responsibility. Have your cat fixed and remember that if you move it is still your responsibility… and apartment dwellers should realize many landlords do not want tenants with cats.
We also need more funding for ANIMAL SHELTERS, AS WELL AS VOLUNTEERS AND SUPPORTERS, FOR THOSE THAT WE DO HAVE. An more free or low cost clinics to help with fixing.
Go to our clinic and heath pages for importation on clinics in our area.
We also have a lost and found page….send backstreetmary@yahoo.com a picture with information and we will share it!!
Kitchen in the Morse House in Early Thanksgivings!
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 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 are 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, is the basis for thePilgrim’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.
William Bradford must have been a shrewd and valued leader in all aspects of the unbelievable hardships faced by this group of religious rebels who crossed a raging sea and forged a home out of unfamiliar, hostile surroundings. Bradford’s election 30 times to the post of Governor of the Plymouth (Plimouth) Colony certainly proves that. So Happy Thanksgiving ... and pass on this bit of history!
I got to thinking about the world situation this morning after listening to the news and as usual a song popped in my head. I was never a hippy or a protester but I was into folk music and that era of quiet protest with songs...too many to remember. Even today songs like "Where have all the Flowers Gone", "Peace Train" and...to many to remember. But occasionally a song from way back pops up. It brought me back to the days of my youth...The Barge and Poor House in Syracuse and getting together with friends late at night singing songs, playing records and thinking about the world through the eyes of song writers, folk singers and such.
I can still remember Joni Mitchell's lyrics..."they paved paradise and put up a parking lot"...and today its a reality. Friends are traveling to vacation spots around the world but now everything basically looks the same...little original flavor in many cities...maybe we are too modern.
Today we spend more time on the internet and our phones and not enough time thinking in the quiet...but that's just my opinion!
Everyone has got a beef about something out in the world...we worry about money more than the future of civilization I fear. Wars and conflict over land have been part of civilization forever. We can tune in to TV shows on the lost civilizations and wonder what happened to them? Do we worry as much about what's happening to us???
Morals have gone out the window, so many think...but we historians can point to Sodom and
Gomorra, Noah and the great flood, asteroid hits, on and on. Today we do ancestry sites to find where we came from and of course hope for a successful relative or a famous relative or two. Perhaps we should be thinking more along the lines of what WE will be remembered for?
I can personally attest to the fact that people come back to the museum to find tidbits on their relatives but trying to get volunteers to help provide it is impossible!
Oh well...here is the song I was thinking of...turn on your sound, think about it and smile... as Uncle
Basil would say "people change...they get worse"...and grandma always said "it only happens to the living!"
The Fall is coming on us quickly, and while getting ready stacking wood and thinking of our next museum event, " Fall Festival History Weekend...I dug this up and thought you might enjoy reading it again! Many of our original settlers in Eaton date back to the Mayflower and the settlers of Natick especially the Morse, Leland, Kent and Stowe families. Eaton followed much of the tradition of Natick so I thought I would include some wonderful history on Thanksgiving and Governor Bradford who Grandma Clark was a direct relative of.
The first Thanksgiving was truly different from what we see portrayed today on TV and in the movies.In actuality, the Pilgrims who had invited the Indians over to thank them for their help in cultivating corn, in fishing and in hunting, and for basically keeping them alive for the first year, were stunned when the Indians arrived for the feast in numbers far beyond what the Pilgrim’s could feed.So, the Indians left and hunted for deer and fowl and returned with the food necessary for the feast to last three days…yes, three days.
This occasion was unusually frivolous for the stern Pilgrims and comprised of continuous eating, the marching of Myles Standish’s little band of soldiers, bow and arrow competition etc…The feast meanwhile was tended to by five of the eighteen women who survived the first terrible winter.Imagine trying to fix a feast for 140-150 people over an open fire, and then stretch it to three days.
The great Governor Bradford delivered this prayer on the first Thanksgiving and I thought I would include it for us:
Oh give thanks unto the Lord; sing unto him; sing praises unto him, for the precious things of heaven for the dew, and for the deep that couches beneath, and for the precious fruits brought forth from the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the moon, and for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the everlasting hills, and for the precious things of the earth and its fullness.Let everything that has breath praise the Lord, Praise ye the Lord.
Of interest, I think, are a number of passages from “Of Plimouth Plantation” by Governor Bradford, which mention the colony’s success only by acts of what he referred to as “God’s divine providence”.
Bradford mentions windfalls of corn from unexpected quarters, a mysterious voice that warned the colonials of a store-house fire, showers that came just in time to save the crops, even the turning back of a ship that would foreclose on the colony.These quotes show the success of the colony having been squarely laid on the cornerstone of faith.
This faith led Bradford to guide the colony through all of its terrible trials and gave him the moral capacity to do what was right for all without wish for personal gain.From his first election in 1622 until 1639, he received nothing for dining the court during their monthly sessions.One comment I received after the piece on the “Common Good” read “too bad things could not be like that today!”To this I say, “Amen!”The word “altruism” is too seldom used to describe our modern leaders.
The key word in our pursuit of the history of the Pilgrim’s is DEMOCRACY.Democracy, is the basis for the Pilgrim’s government, carried through both the church and the state, something we need to concentrate on today I think. Fall Festival will be the later in October - 21 & 22 this year our little museum in its 25 year will close for the season at the end of the month. For those days the museum will host a special display on the Chenango Canal with Backstreet Mary on hand give a small talk on the Canal and Eaton's industries which made Peck's Post in Eaton, the Canal's busiest port.
Put your sound on and listen to and oldie and a fall favorite from a past Fall History Weekend theme!
Today as I sit here in my office looking out over the the Old Union School and the historic Eaton Church, I was struck by the fact that since I came to this little hamlet in 1984 things have changed drastically. The change has been not for the better in many cases.
The old friends I used to treasure are for the most part gone, many relatives gone, associates gone, and most original museum members are gone. An old friend Nellie Wooten taught me so much about the people she knew each time we walked in the cemetery...once on the way down to town she looked back over her shoulder and said wistfully with sadness...all my friends and relatives are here...I miss them.
Maybe because of my tiredness and depression caused by the fact that I have not accomplished more in this short summer that is slipping away...whatever it is... I could not stop singing or humming a very sad song…"Deep Purple"!
When the deep purple falls..
Over sleepy garden walls?…
And the stars begin to twinkle in the night..
In the mist of a memory ..
You wander on back to me..
Breathing my name with a sigh..
As of course, you would suspect …the song has an unbelievable history. This piece of music was written originally as a piano piece written by pianist Peter DeRose, who broadcast, 1923 to 1939, with May Singhi as "The Sweethearts of the Air" on the NBC radio network.
"Deep Purple" was published in 1933 as a piano composition. The following year, Paul Whiteman had it scored for his suave "big band" orchestra that was "making a lady out of jazz" in Whiteman's phrase. "Deep Purple" became so popular in sheet music sales that Mitchell Parish added lyrics in 1938 or 1939.
It was recorded so many times by different bands and sung by different singers that it is amazing. On the hit charts it was a number 1 song in 1939 with Larry Witman, it was also number 2 for Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra, a number 9 for Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians, number14 on the charts for Bing Crosby, number 17 for Artie Shaw and His Orchestra….. all in 1939.
By January 1949 Paul Weston and His Orchestra recorded it as well as Billy Ward and His Dominoes in September. For us 70 year olds it became number 1 again for Nino Tempo and April Stevens in September 1963 and also a hit for Donny and Marie Osmond in December 1975.
It just seems to remind you of every love, every person you ever knew.. and how loneliness feels at night in this small town.
In the still of the night
Once again I hold you tight..
Though you're gone,
Your love lives on when moonlight beams
And as long as my heart will beat,
Sweet loved ones we'll always meet..
Here in my deep purple dreams…
I have been working all summer on my house that was going to the bulldozer when I bought it...Mr Woods house... and part of the old school. It has survived 200 plus years of floods, wars, trees falling on it, and this past two a fire...I am still working on it.
I am working on a growing website of history for Eaton, another website to try and help people understand the importance of fixing their animals called 4 Community Cats, my blog View from the BackStreet that reflects my thoughts on history on the area, and a perhaps a bit of hope.
My hope rises as the Stone Morse House on the hill is finally being saved, plus all in all we still have here Eaton Fire Department, a Community Bible Church, a well kept EatonVillage Cemetery, the Old Town of Eaton Museum, a store and gas station... as well as a beautiful scenic place to live. A place we can just look out at the world with all its wars, sorrows, and disasters from.
Depressed...yes I am...but filled with some hope for the future.
It is interesting to note that Eaton actually had a newspaper for a while; we are lucky to have a copy of one in the museum archives. Old newspapers are a great way to visit the past and give us much information on the people and businesses that once thrived in our rural communities. I ran across an article taken from the Eaton Herald and was republish in the Madison County Leader under history.
The Eaton Herald brought to Eatonians the news of country, state, and village, and announced through its four-column, eight-page sheet much news. Some of this was so interesting I thought I would include some of the information here.
The publisher of this 1884 sheet was G. B. Greenfield whose office was the first door east of the Exchange Hotel. The price per inch was twice that of the Leader’s, and got business for advertisers because the Leader’s advertisers were allowed to change their copy only four times a year. Unfortunately the editor took ill, ending its run.
From the EATON HERALD
“Barnum’s Greatest Show on Earth is second only to the large and handsome display of fine stoves and ranges, for sale at G. E. Clark’s in the Blakeman Block, Eaton, N.Y.
“Paper, Sir - The Eaton Herald-just off the press-Wood, Taber and Morse will run on three-fourths time!”
On the Fourth of July…The great day passed off very quietly at Log City save for the booming of the cannon, which jarred out nearly all of N. Bence’s windowpanes.
H. C. Holmes conducted his “Temple of Variety” under the slogan “Death to Large Profits”, and the Morse Brothers stepped out in bigger and bolder letters, “NOW IS THE TIME” and proceeded to tell of dry goods, shoes, boots, and celebrated corsets-all of which were advertised as being selected with great care as to quality, and which are for sale at the lowest living prices.
L. L. Hamilton of West Eaton proclaimed in four inches, single column, that “For the Presidential year, we propose to sell more goods than ever before,” while downstream at Eaton A.D. Morton made the “Largest Stock of Furniture at the Lowest Prices in Madison County.”
B. Leavenworth offered bargains in clothing all the year around in men’s, youth’s and children’s clothing, and Jacob Dickson’s custom tailoring was warranted and guaranteed, especially the “Light Pants and White Vests,” a specialty at this time of year.
Wooden Water Pipe was manufactured by Gardner Morse who also dealt in lumber and mill work. On the corner of Main and Church St., Medbury’s Furniture and Undertaking House sold everything from Chamber Suites to cheap beds for hop picking. And at that very date T. R. Jones was opening a meat market in the basement of the Blakeman Block.
Under a section called local intelligence we find out that that season was very dry… and “S. A. Curtis was the champion at the glass ball shoot Thursday.”
“The editor of this paper is responsible for the assertion that Eaton has the best cornet band of any place in Madison County.” “J. Morey’s little boy fell from the milk wagon while going to the cheese factory yesterday, the wagon passed over his body. The extent of his injuries we have not learned.” “Ed Wilcox, mail agent on the Central was quite seriously hurt at the collision between his train and a freight at Albany on Wednesday of this week. He is able to be around, however, and will doubtless soon recover.” “The Stage Line was being operated between West Eaton and the O. & W. Station by E. Isebell three times daily.”
In Georgetown the Herald reports… “Fred Hill was hit by lightning for the second time in his life and still lives to tell the story. D. Whitmore was also getting his billiard parlor in running order to make way for wizards of the cue. “
It was a much more simple time when Eaton’s name had gone from “Log City” to its more sophisticated proper name of Eaton Village. The summer brought an influx of people from NYC while Wood, Taber & Morse put on much labor to run its machine shop night and day because of demand. Eaton was also the site of the Madison County Home and vast agricultural fields that attracted large groups of pickers in the summer…a “Bustling Town”’
For young people today it would be interesting I think to learn about how things were done and how people traveled in the early days... even learning about money and currency. There was no plastic money or Western Union.
Currency was issued by different institutions, not only the US Treasury. In reading some of the old Morse letters of Eunice Morse Pratt and her families removal from Eaton to the west,I ran across this interesting letter that explains much about this and life in the early 1840's as well as information on her family for genealogists in the area.
"Palmyra April 13th 1842
Dear Brother - I received your letter the fourth of April dated March 15 and with it the Draft for eighty-six dollars dated March 15. The Draft here was worth ten percent more than currency. I sold it to Mr. Locthan the largest merchant in Palmyra for cash and left the money with him and get a little at a time as I want to use it. The western Banks are a breaking so fast there is no safety in keeping one dollar. I shall get what things I need and let the rest be until have use for it.
You would like to know where I live. I lived with Edwin three years then I went to the farm and stayed two years. I liked to live there I felt as if it was my home in January I came to see Edwin I found him sick with a cold, nobody but his little boy and Gridley for company and blacks to do his work he wanted I should stay it is a good home for me.
Gridley goes to school here and I expect Mary here this week to go with him. There is no school near the farm. I expect to stay here with them some time. Virgil, Warner, Fanny and James live on the farm. They are a sawing and grinding and making the improvements better.
Warner is one of the Candidates for sheriff he thinks he should get it but it will be a doubtful case. The present sheriff and another popular man are on the ticket.
Edwin is doing a good in land and is farming and selling wood. He has two children Betsy and John. The little girl lives with Lawyer Wright her uncle. There is a great scarcity of money here all business men are crying hard times many go to work and spend less.
Eunice had quite the life and her obituary tells us much of her story and so I include a bit of it here."
OBITUARY OF EUNICE MORSE PRATT
"Mrs. Eunice Pratt, widow of the late Dr. James Pratt and mother of
Colonel Warner Pratt, died on December 30, 1869 at the residence of her daughter, Mary Shotton, who is the wife of Judge William N. Shotton.
The deceased was born in Sherburn, Mass December 10, 1790 and emigrated with her father, the late Joseph Morse, Esq. to the Burchard Farm in Madison County, New York, in 1796. Here, her father built one of the first frame houses erected in that region. It was near the Indian trial from the Susquehanna to Stockbridge and thus at a remarkably early period in life she made an acquaintance with the red skins and began an extraordinary life of pioneer service.
In 1802, four years before the town of Eaton was set off from Hamilton, her father moved to Eaton, which is now the seat of the family homestead and erected one of the first gristmills south of Whitestown. Here in company with the late Ellis Morse, Esq. and her other brothers and sisters, she spent her youth, became familiar with every phase of pioneer life, its perils, its hardships and its attractions, and here supplied with such books as Dilworth’s Spelling book, Dabolls Arithmetic, the Columbian Orater and the Bible, she began her education with she concluded at the old Academy at Clinton where she graduated two years prior to its institution as Hamilton College.
In 1814 Eunice married to Dr. James Pratt, a brother of the father of the Hon. Daniel D. Pratt, United States Senator from Indiana and raised a numerous family.
After his death she again, in 1836, entered upon the pioneer life and removed, with her family, to Palmyra, Missouri, making the entire distance in a wagon. Shortly afterword a family homestead was purchased within what is now part of Knox County and she located thereon.
She was certainly a woman of indomitable resolution and energy or at the age of 46. when a widow, she would have hesitated long ere removing from a home among friends surrounded with the refinements of civilization into a comparatively unknown section to again endure the trials, privations and hardships incident to pioneer life. She was, as it were, a connecting link between the centuries and had, in her youth, seen the wilderness of New York transformed into a center of civilization.
She had seen towns and cities spring up on every hand and institutions of learning, now justly celebrated through out the country, established. In middle life she had again contributed her energy to subdue the wilderness. She had again seen the form of the savage recede from the rushing time of civilization and once more had seen towns and cities rise phoenix like from mother earth. Her memory was richly stored with narratives of the War of Independence and she had lived through two important conflicts through which this country has passed. What an unusual experience was hers."
I could not have summed it up better...a true glimpse of our past and a women's role!
