Melville Landon - Known to the World as Eli Perkins

If traveling near Eaton in the late 1800’s, you might have gone out of your way to see an oddity as noted here in HOUSE BEAUTIFUL MAGAZINE. 

“Eli Perkins Japanese Bungalow at Eaton is a unique summer home. It looks up and down the Chenango Valley for miles, and it is so pretty that travelers go out of their way to see it. Outside and inside it looks as if it had been dropped down from feudal Japan. The lawn is dotted with huge Japanese vase and porcelain lanterns, and scampering around them were a half dozen sacred Japanese dogs. Inside are Japanese servants dressed in the costumes of old Japan, and when they walk around porcelain curios, bronze storks and ugly dragons from Kyoto, the visitors think they are in the “Flowery Kingdom” 

Melville Landon was born in Eaton, N.Y., 1839, he was known under the pen name of Eli Perkins. Landon attended Madison University (now Colgate) and graduated from Union College in what was called the ‘war class of 1861.’ 

After graduating from Union College, he went to Washington with other Union graduates. After Fort Sumpter was fired upon, he assisted in organizing and then serving in the famous Cassius M. Clay battalion, which bivouacked in the White House, War Department and Capitol until the Seventh New York Regiment and Fifth Massachusetts marched through Baltimore to Washington attaining the rank of Major. During the War he was asked to take over two seised plantations that he ran to prove that free men would work harder than slave labor.

It is recorded that he passed many an hour in a literary rendezvous, under a Fifth Avenue Hotel, with many of his celebrated friends, Atemus Ward, Petroleum V. Nasby, and Josh Billings.  

He became friends with the Emperor of Japan and was given 4 scared dogs that he bred in Eaton and gave away for fundraisers, one of which is buried in the Eaton Cemetery. The Eaton Museum has much information and artifacts on him, as well as a book I wrote as a fundraiser that contains his humor. 

Landon became the President of the New York News Association and attained much wealth, spending his later years traveling to raise money for the YMCA & Civil War Veterans and their wives, spending summers at his Eaton Bungalow. 

His family home and his Japanese Bungalow are still standing on Landon Road today, and he is buried in the Eaton Village Cemetery at the top of the steps that lead to Landon Road. His beautiful Coptic cross monument, erected by his wife has an hourglass carved into it with the words. 

“HE MIXED REASON WITH PLEASURE AND WISDOM WITH MIRTH”. 

Remembering Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address, & ties to Utica and Lorenzo here in Madison County!

Horatio Seymour a Utica native and Governor of the State of New York, was one of those privileged to hear in person one of America’s greatest speeches. On November 19, 1863 he sat with 5 other northern state governors in Gettysburg, the speech to be delivered by President Lincoln at the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery.

This November 19th the speech called “The Gettysburg Address” became 147 years old, and starting in April, Gettysburg along with other important sites of the Civil War will start a 150 Anniversary set of programs to commemorate that great turning point in American history.

The battle, which lasted three days, killed over 7,000 men and over 300 horses that lay on the ground decaying in the heat of July. The battle had wounded another 40,000 or so men and the people of Gettysburg - that only numbered 2,400 had the ungodly job of burying the dead and burning the horse carcasses.

It is they, with an attorney David Wills, who petitioned the Governor of Pennsylvania to get federal funding to buy land (17 acres for $2,475) to turn into a final fitting-resting place for the fallen. Throughout the ensuing months bodies were exhumed from the battlefield and buried in the nearby cemetery and November 19th 1863, the day it was to be dedicated.

The main orator was to be the famous Edward Everett delivering an 13,000 plus word oration, followed by music and then the President who delivered only 300 words. Those 300 words however, have lived forever, and to this day are quoted by many school children that have memorized it.

Lincoln’s purpose in the speech was to bring the importance of keeping the Union together and finishing the war as one “Nation” to the people. (Lincoln had become unpopular as over a quarter of a million men died already and debate on the draft was raging) We are still one Union and the Gettysburg Address is indeed one of America's greatest speeches.

*Of interest is that Horatio Seymour was born in Pompey, New York and moved to Utica at 10 years old, his sister Clarissa married Ledyard Lincklaen her second cousin and lived her days out at Lorenzo in Cazenovia.

Missionaries, Madison County History, Emily Chubbuck, and the Old Town of Eaton Museum!

While working on a new book named “The History You Never Knew” 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???

 Do you know this man?

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.

Shakers, inventions, patents, milk and a new history quest!

Brother Hollister and his inventio

When putting on an event, even a little one…I end up with a whole group of interesting history tidbits I planned to write a blog about.  So this week I am going to share a few and try to catch up with the backlog.

While doing research on next years lecture, which includes much history on the Shakers of New York State…Sodus, Groveland and Niskayuna… and another Eaton book on Patents... I ran across a tidbit that put me on another history quest.

The Shakers were a very ingenious group of people of varied backgrounds that wished to use everything God gave them to the betterment of mankind.  It was like a mantra to them.  So they invented many machines and laborsaving devices that they never patented.  They felt that if God sent them this idea as a “gift” they should let mankind (the World’s People) benefit from it. 

One such gift is a mainstream item we get use from today.  No it is not the close pin or the circular saw that they are noted for inventing…no not the washing machine…. but an evaporator.

The Shakers were the first organized company that sold herbal remedies to the new world market.  Yes herbs… like today’s modern herbal cures… as I always say, “Everything old is new again”. 

The Shakers dried, bottled, and shipped herbal remedies around the world.  The cures were celebrated, but to preserve the quality of their distilled herbs Brother Alonzo Hollister invented an evaporator.  The evaporator dried the herbs at a lower temperature using a vacuum.

Here enters a visitor to the Shakers, a man who became fascinated with the machine and idea of preservation by evaporation. He began experimenting with the idea of drying food using evaporation and vacuum. He patented the machine, as Patent RE2103.  Brother Hollister’s visitor’s name was Gail Borden.

It seems Gail and his brother John Borden were the publishers of a newspaper, the Telegraph and Texas Register.  Selling his shares in the paper after his brother left, a paper that was often in financial trouble, he became a mover in Texas politics and helped write the early drafts of the Texas Constitution.  From there Borden who seemed to be in financial trouble often went into real estate, eventually looking for a way to make money by making a dried beef product.

After a wave of milk contamination swept the nation… he decided to try to dry milk using the evaporating and vacuum method he had seen … and the product and evaporator were patented to him in 1856… this product made him a fortune and started the Borden’s Milk Company... makers of Eagle Brand Condensed Milk a… product that was in great demand by the outbreak of the Civil War.

Today Borden’s is still making the product and we as “the worlds people” are still benefitting from Shaker Brother Hollister’s invention…an idea that was a “gift”.

History quest are fun don’t you think? Here is video I did on Niskayuna near Albany...Enjoy!

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!

Local history and the Gettysburg Address

This is a sad and important week in America’s history.  It is certainly a well-remembered week for many history buffs and especially for the people of Gettysburg, PA.

A local man, Horatio Seymour a Utica native and Governor of the State of New York, was one of those privileged to hear in person one of America’s greatest speeches.  On November 19, 1863 he sat with 5 other northern state governors in Gettysburg, the speech to be delivered by President Lincoln at the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery.

This November 19^th the speech called “The Gettysburg Address” became 150 years old.

The battle, which lasted three days, killed over 7,000 men and over 300 horses that lay on the ground decaying in the heat of July.  The battle had wounded another 40,000 or so men and the people of Gettysburg - that only numbered 2,400 had the ungodly job of burying the dead and burning the horse carcasses.

It is the people of Gettysburg, with an attorney David Wills, who petitioned the Governor of Pennsylvania to get federal funding to buy land (17 acres for $2,475) to turn into a final fitting-resting place for the fallen.  Throughout the ensuing months bodies were exhumed from the battlefield and buried in the nearby cemetery and on November 19^th 1863, was the day it was to be dedicated.

The main orator was to be the famous Edward Everett delivering a 13,000 plus word oration, followed by music and then the President who delivered only 300 words. Those 300 words however, have lived forever, and to this day are quoted by many school children that have memorized it.

Lincoln’s purpose in the speech was to bring the importance of keeping the Union together and finishing the war as one “Nation” to the people. At this point in the war Lincoln had become unpopular as over a quarter of a million men died already and debate on the draft was raging.

 We are still one Union and the Gettysburg Address is indeed one of America's greatest speeches. 

*Of interest to us Madison County people is that Horatio Seymour was born in Pompey, New York and moved to Utica at 10 years old, his sister Clarissa married Ledyard Lincklaen her second cousin and lived her days out at Lorenzo in Cazenovia.

Listen to a recreation of the speech!

Did you ever wonder where something came from? How about the monument in Peterboro???

Monument on Peterboro Green

We all drive our way to places using the same routes over and over, but do we ever notice things and wonder how they got there?  I drove past the Peterboro Green Civil War Memorial marker continually and never really wondered how it got there until recently.  Many would suspect that the Smith family put it there after the Civil War…but not so…the marker was never put there until 1893…and how it got there is an interesting story in itself.

The Peterboro Green has marked the center of Peterboro since the inception of the town by Peter Smith.  Smith had placed it there and wanted it to look like Boston Commons.  The Land Office and mansion of the Smith family faced it directly…though the house is now gone…burned in 1937.

The role played in the saga of the Civil War by Gerrit Smith, Peter Smith’s son, is well known in Madison County… but what about the monument?

It seems that a very industrious young man named Aaron T. Bliss, who worked in Morrisville and Madison…among other places as a young man… enlisted in the 10^th NY Volunteer Calvary and served in the Civil War rising to the rank of Captain.  After his service he moved to Michigan and became a successful businessman, ending up in politics serving Michigan as a Michigan State Senator and later as a member of the US House of Representatives… eventually becoming the states 25th governor.

On a return trip to his native home for a visit, he realized that Madison County did not have a monument dedicated to the men who fought and died in the war.   So Bliss decided to donate one delegating John Woodbury to purchase a monument to be placed in Peterboro on the Green with the words…”Fraternity...Charity...Loyalty” carved on it.

So on July 4^th, 1893 …many years after the end of the conflict…with a prayer and presentation, Bliss and other dignitaries dedicated it… and today it stands a reminder of a terrible time in the past …and honors the men caught in that struggle to preserve the Union.

For more history and videos visit www.HistoryStarProductions.com...

The week in review, MLK Day, Lincoln, Guns & Gordon Lightfoot

This week has been another week of bitter and mean comments about guns, the president, elderly on social security - labeled as living off the system, families needing food stamps because of job loss or poor paying jobs, fracking, Hurricane Sandy relief, war, choking smog in China, snow in Europe, heatwave in Australia, death in Syria and Mali…. and on an on.  I just could not stand it …so I off’d Facebook comments that bothered me…..and tuned out the news.

Martin Luther King Day and the Inauguration are on the same day… I found that almost ironic.  The hatred and bigotry that he faced is still here today, it has just resurfaced because we have a “black” president. … Humorously he is half white so why not call him a “white president”?

It occurred to me that instead of going after food stamp people who are poor or elderly and need it, perhaps we should check those on programs that can afford to buy multiple guns and ammunition that cost over $1 per round?  I pondered this whole situation…no answers!

I wondered if the biggest haters of the newer gun laws were those who had run-ins with the law and were afraid they wouldn’t pass the background check...motivated by FEAR!!

The movies this week brought Lincoln into view.  The new Lincoln movie has shown a light on Lincoln as a “saint” of sorts and “Great Emancipator”, yet I know he was a racist of sorts…he only wanted to preserve the Union at all cost knowing slavery was the Union’s most divisive problem…and cost it did… almost 600,000 people died in that bloody conflict…

Really... it wasn’t until MLK and the peaceful freedom marches and the desegregation movement took place ... that blacks could finally see a small light at the end of the tunnel.

So I slunk around the house all week chopping wood to relieve the stress by day and took out my old guitar and sung a few songs at night…The one song that kept coming back to me was by my favorite...Gordon Lightfoot...it is called “Too Late for Prayin’”…. and says it all eloquently in a nut shell…..

**Please take the time to view this video and listen to the words…friends, foes, teachers, preachers, poets, workers, haters, and everyone.  There is a message….and some harsh truth for us all to ponder!!

Dr. Mary E. Walker, clothing reformer - her link to Madison County and the Oneida Community!

Dr. Mary E. Walker is an interesting woman who has been forgotten by many in the history of “Women’s Rights” and Central New York.

She is known perhaps more for her Congressional Medal of Honor (the only one ever awarded to a woman) for serving as a doctor and surgeon during the Civil War and less for her contribution to women’s health and well-being. Born to an unusually free thinking family from Oswego, New York, Walker was encouraged by both her father and mother to enter into fields that in her time were considered men’s alone. 

Her legacy included her lifelong dress reform work that put her in constant rebuke and caused her great friction with the Women’s Movement leaders like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  As a matter of fact she annoyed them so much they practically wrote her out of the “Women’s Rights History Encyclopedia” that they authored with Matilda Gage.   The early advocates of “bloomers style” had eventually stopped wearing them because they felt it drew attention from the “cause”. Mary Walker however continued the practice, especially necessary during her Civil War Service, where she dressed more like a man in uniform. 

Walker was known to wear a bloomer type of costume from its entrance into the reform spotlight when Elizabeth Smith Miller of Madison County introduced it to Amelia Bloomer.....until the day she died.  Her main talking points were that tightfitting corsets and heavy bulky dresses endangered woman’s health, especially when they were working. Her mother was another freethinker who also wore the costume.

To support her stance she endured being spit upon in public, having bricks thrown at her, was followed by male crowds, victimized with rebuffs and even arrested in major cities and towns that did not want her to speak on behalf of woman.

One of her supporters however, leads us right back here to Madison County… On one occasion an Officer Johnson who charged her with appearing in “male costume” and disorderly conduct, arrested her. …The Oneida Community’s periodical “Circular” covered the event since the Oneida Community had long favored reform clothing for its workingwomen.  The “Circular” praised the dress reform movement and called her attire - “sensible and attractive" and said that she should be honored for her “long service as an assistant surgeon during the Civil War.”

She did live long enough to see her costume embraced at the turn of the century for “tennis and bicycling and other athletic endeavors for women”!

I often think about how far we have come with dress reform today! Walker is buried in the Town of Oswego Cemetery just a short distance from where she was born on November 26^th, 1832 and raised.

Dr. Bertha Van Hoosen’s memorial perhaps best fits her:  Dr. Mary’s life should stand out to remind us that when people do not think as we do, do not dress as we do, and do not live as we do, that they are more than a half century ahead of their time, and that we should have for them not ridicule but reverence.”

Here is an interesting little history clip of this famous CNY woman!

 

Epilogue:

Educated as a Doctor in 1850’s at the Syracuse Medical College, she graduated as a medical doctor and eventually married one of her classmates going went into practice with him on Dominick Street in Rome, NY.  Her husband was unfaithful and she sought a divorce from him - another rarity for the times.  In these yearly years women had to prove the unfaithfulness of their husband (which was easy for her) and then have to wait 5 years for the decree – it eventually took 8 years to accomplish.

During the conflict she also acted as a spy for the “Secret Service”.

Walker became a popular speaker and traveled to Europe to lecture on women’s health, clothing reform, women’s rights and more; as a matter of fact she was considered a fabulous public speaker crisscrossing the country stumping for women’s rights and voting reform for much of her life.  In later years she studied court records and was keenly interested in the criminal insanity plea.

A new book by Sharon Harris called Dr. Mary Walker: An American Radical is a wonderful read with in-depth information on this woman of indomitable will and courage. 

A Close Encounter with the Battle Hymn of the Republic and a tree

Well this week I had a “close encounter” with The Battle Hymn of the Republic.  I understand that this sounds strange but there is no other way to describe it. 

Dinner party this week ended in a discussion about the Civil War..involvement of the people of the area…and the Secret Six.  Of course everyone knows about Gerrit Smith and his membership in the Secret Six, but very few actually could name the other five members.., - Thomas Wentworth  Higginson, , Theodore Parker,  George Luther Stearns, Franklin Sanborn, and Samuel Gridley Howe.  Another interesting revelation was that Julia Ward Howe the poet and writer who penned the Battle Hymn of the republic was Samuel Gridley Howe’s wife.

The Battle Hymn was certainly the most memorable song to come out of the Civil War with Lorena, and Johnny Comes Marching Home …but little else was known about it.

So as usual I gave them a run down of its history….The song was written after a ride outside of Washington DC during the Civil War…But lets let  Mrs. Howe tell it in her own words:

"One day we drove out to attend a review of troops,

 appointed to take place at some distance from the city.

 In the carriage with me were James Freeman Clarke

 and Mr. and Mrs. Whipple.

The day was fine, and everything promised well,

but a sudden surprise on the part of the enemy

interrupted the proceedings before they were well

begun. A small body of our men had been sur-

rounded and cut off from their companions, re-

enforcements were sent to their assistance, and

the expected pageant was necessarily given up.

The troops who were to have taken part in it were

ordered back to their quarters, and we also turned

our horses' heads homeward.

"For a long distance the foot soldiers nearly

filled the road. They were before and behind,

and we were obliged to drive very slowly. We

presently began to sing some of the well-known

songs of the war, and among them:

'John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave.'.

This seemed to please the soldiers, who cried,

'Good for you,' and themselves took up the strain.

Mr. Clarke said to me, 'You ought to write some

new words to that tune.' I replied that I had

often wished to do so.

"In spite of the excitement of the day I went to

bed and slept as usual, but awoke next morning in

the gray of the early dawn, and to my astonish-

ment found that the wished-for lines were ar-

ranging themselves in my brain. I lay quite still

until the last verse had completed itself in my

thoughts, then hastily arose, saying to myself, ' I

shall lose this if I don't write it down immediately.'

I searched for a sheet of paper and an old stump

of a pen which I had had the night before and

began to scrawl the lines almost without looking,

as I had learned to do by often scratching down

verses in the darkened room where my little chil-

dren were sleeping. Having completed this, I

lay down again and fell asleep, but not without

feeling that something of importance had hap-

pened to me."

THE song it is said made Abe Lincoln weep when he heard it and became his favorite...I told everyone this and after they left Back Street Barb Keough stayed on a bit and I so got out the computer and the guitar and we sung the verses as Mrs. Howe had written them.

Before Barb left I told her a story I loved…it goes that at one time Lincoln was at the theater and they were playing the “Battle Hymn” and it made Lincoln look up just in time to see the chandelier swinging and about to fall…he yelled for people to get out of the way…saving the day…Barb smiled and walked out to her car and left.

I thought to myself…hmm.. so I looked at the computer and found that Julia was born on May 27^th which was a couple of days earlier..serendipity I thought..

Just then the huge maple tree next to my house collapsed on to the roof and also the  driveway where Barb had been 2 minutes earlier….

Strange I thought…..perhaps the Battle Hymn had struck a cord with the powers to be…..I wonder!...Hmmm

Listen and view and see if the song does not give you a shiver when you hear it!

*****

Oh yes..Gerrit Smith is credited with signing the Bail Bond for Jefferson Davis at the end of the Civil War..but Jefferson Davis was a member of the Mason Congressional Committee investigating the Raid at Harper's Ferry and the involvement of the Secret Six...when Smith went into the insane hospital after bank drafts with his name were found in John Brown's belongings.. Jefferson Davis and the committee did not persue Smith..the other members ran for fear of indictment.. with one exception...Higginson...a brave man.

As for Smith..I believe the Bail Bond was....."Quid Pro Quo"