Some Interesting History - Congregational church

 

The James Pratt house, which for almost 70 years had sported a historic marker, is no longer there..  The house located on today's Route 26 once sat on the hill next to the Great Skaneateles Turnpike... on lands once owned by Joseph Morse. 

Morse was considered by many to be the father of Eaton because of his expansive business empire.  Its builder, Dr. James Pratt, came from Massachusetts in the early1800’s and became the first physician in the Town of Eaton and the town’s first teacher, moving to teach in the early days in rotation to three different sites within the town.

 

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

 

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

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

 

     Eunice Morse had come to the then wilderness of which became Madison County, with her father, the son of Capt. Joseph Morse and mother Eunice, who was of the famous Bigelow family of Natick, immortalized in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Old Town Folks.  Young Eunice attended school under Dr. James Pratt, and was exceedingly friendly with the Indian children of the area, often inviting them in to warm by the fire. (The Morse family always left the “latch spring” open for their native friends.)  

After her father’s death, Ellis, a brother who also came with them, would take the businesses of Eaton over from his father and his brother Joseph Morse Jr.   Joseph Sr. upon his death had bequeathed Eunice $600 to be paid by Joseph Jr. in 3 years from his death, and a lot.  Eunice continued her education going on to graduate from Clinton Academy in 1810 – the last graduating class before it became Hamilton College.

 

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

 

An interesting side note is that Dr. Pratt’s will created quite a storm when he left money to fight an ongoing lawsuit with the Congregational Church he was such a part of.  During this period Charles Grandison Finney, the Evangelist of Oberlin fame, had favored the congregation standing to sing and sitting to pray.  Dr. Pratt believed this wrong and spent much of his fortune fighting this practice.  He sued the church. 

The church that, ironically, that was in the community where  Charles G. Finney lived as a boy.  Finney  lived in early Eaton Village, then Log City, with his aunt and uncle the Cyrus Finneys.  This house today has a historic marker on the corner of route 26  and English Avenue. Cyrus Finney's wife's father was a preacher who lived with them....Rev.Heminway!

Charles Grandson Finney as a preacher introduced anxious seats he used in his conversions.

Please help us put on a special 250th Anniversary Parade.! Contact any one of our group... Jen Calois, Michele Kelly, Barbara Keough, Sharry Woodcock or me..you can email me at backstreetmary@yahoo.com. or go to

https://gofund.me/6318335

The Sylvester Finneys & Charles Grandison Finney & another NYS Marker

Today many people have little knowledge of probably one of the most important evangelists of the 1800’s, Charles Grandison Finney.  Finney was born in Conneticut, but moved with his mother and father to western New York in 1792. Finney lived a part of his youth in the Oneida County, and stayed during his earliest years in Eaton, New York with his aunt and uncle the Cyrus Finney’s. A marker for this site is on Route 26. Finney is also remembered in Hammond's History of Madison County because of his prank of putting the school master's dog in the oven where he baked bread on the side. The dog was rescued of course, and his school mates told on him. This school was located in today's Eaton Cemtery where the flag post and bench new. We are lucky enough to have an early school book handwritten by the schoolmaster on display in the Eaton Museum.  Finney remained friends with some his schoolmates that included Ellis Morse.   Charles was a bright boy who did not go to college but taught himself much, and studied law under an attorney in Adams, New York.. It is there he claimed to have had a mystical experience while walking, an experience in which he met Jesus face to face. Soon after this “spiritual awakening” he began preaching, eventually being ordained in a Presbyterian minister in 1824. Finney was so overwhelmingly good on the pulpit that his following grew and his conversions to the faith multiplied in leaps and bounds. Stories of his revivals brought request for his special form of preaching and conversion using what he termed “anxious seats”. It is estimated that he converted over 100,000 people to Christ in the mid 1850’s. Finney had a good sense of humor and dressed in gray, a different look from the all black ministers of the day, and is remembered for when he came to the Syracuse area at the request of ministers who heard him preach. Unable to accommodate them at the time of their request, he returned the following year and is credited with helping to reopen the churches to the faithful. Below a video on the Skaneateles Turnpike site at the end of it where it linked with the  Third Great Wester Turnpike (the Cherry Valley) in Monticello.

Memorial Day, historians, cemeteries and their history of communities!

Working in a cemetery can be a wonderful experience.  The quite of the surroundings… trees rustling in the wind that almost seeming to whisper past secrets to you.  The "town’s"  history lies in its cemetery.  Many times I can feel it as I walk along the rows of markers.  After having lived in this little area for 30 years (and being the curator of its museum) I actually know many of the people buried beneath the ground even though I never met them.  I guess it’s a historian thing.

The Historic Eaton Cemetery has an unbelievable wealth of history attached to it from its early roots 200 years ago, as it is located on the Old Indian Trail that brought settlers west from Albany and south from Bainbridge.  That path then became the Skaneateles-Hamilton Turnpike.   It once had the early Eaton school house on its grounds right where the flag pole sits today.  Luminaries like Ellis Morse and the Evangelist Charles Grandison Finney went to school in this little log building.  (I have the early handwritten schoolbook in the Eaton Museum).

The cemetery is also the resting place of many of the men who fought in every war starting with the American Revolution, those marked with flags every Memorial Day.  We even have some woman veterans buried here - two of which will be honored this year.

The old white stones shinning in the sun also reveal the names of some of the earliest settlers including Chad Brown whose family started Brown University, Miles Standish III who was the direct descendant (third in line) from that famous Puritan Miles Standish.  Also Mrs. Deiadamia Button Chase and her brood of historians (Luna Hammond and Julius Hammond) and seven  . MD’s…yes.. seven... of course she was the first female Doctor in Madison county.

People’s whose names made the news in the 1800’s like Andrew Bigelow Morse the young missionary to Siam and Chaplain of the Treasury Department during the Civil War, a friend of Lincoln’s.  His brother Col. Henry Bagg Morse of the 114^th Regiment of NYS Volunteers who became a beloved Grand Circuit Judge in Arkansas after the war.  

Just so many names… so much history.  I love the special stones… one woman has marked on the back of her stone her oft quoted phrase… “I am not perfect. But I am consistently adequate!”   Another is so sad... it reads… “How many hopes lie buried here?”

I have just put together a book on the cemetery for the anniversary of the incorporation of the Eaton Village Cemetery Association.  They are going to sell it as a fundraiser at our Eaton Day Event… I hope you will join us for this special day, will visit the cemetery, and take the free self-guided tour. I am confident that you will

feel the history at your feet!