The Old Town of Eaton Museum will be open this Sunday from 1 to 3! Come down and enjoy the Day and learn some history you never knew about Eaton!
Well... is anyone tired of the election yet????? I am! This whole thing has gotten out of hand..and this back and forth, back and forth, without any real information or with information that changes depending on the day.... has really got me. Can we Mail in ballots or noT? I remember an interesting story that I was spouting at dinner about Grover Cleveland and the R & R thing..I remembered a Republican minister with local ties who went to fill a speaking engagement for another person who had to cancel. His name was Dr. Samuel Dickenson Burchard and he got up and gave the usual preacher long winded speech.. in - part off the cuff ..when he interjected the words...an alliteration actually...Rum, Romanism & Rebellion! A reporter who was half asleep pick up on it..and the rest is history!!!! I quote here from the website Rum, Romanism and Rebellion...
"Days before the election, James Blaine visited the crucial swing state of New York, attending a morning meeting in a New York City hotel. During a speech made by Presbyterian minister Samuel Burchard, the Democratic Party was assailed as the party of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.” In many ways, this phrase singled out Irish Catholics, many of whom lived in the large urban centers like New York and Boston. The phrase catered to the stereotype of the drunken Irishman and demeaned the Catholic faith. Most all Irish were Roman Catholic."
"The term “Rebellion” was a typical post Civil War Republican ploy of “waving the bloody shirt,” reminding voters that it had been the Democrats who were responsible for the great bloodshed and connecting them to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. "
"Catholic priests took to the pulpit the weekend before the election and urged church members to vote against the Republicans. When it was all over, Cleveland carried the state."
Well Dr. Samuel Dickenson Burchard was from the famous Burchard family of Pecksport in Eaton. His brother was the famous Sylvester Burchard who brought the first breeding herd of Holsteins to the USA and who was also a famous judge of the breed. Sylvester was married to Ali Morse of the famous Morse family of Eaton.
What is interesting is that I have some things of Dr. Burchard's in the Old Town of Eaton Museum. One is the story told by his niece that after the election Grover Cleveland (who also had ties to Eaton - his brother was the minister of the Eaton Congregational Church)- invited Burchard to the White House to thank him for his remarks and laugh..Burchard said he didn't want to be seen doing it for obvious reasons, so the President sent a coach with curtains drawn for him and brought him to the White House in secret!
In fact though..Blaine also lost that election because of Republicans who jumped sides and became known as "Mug Wumps"!
A humorous side note!!!!
When asked about the loss, James Blaine was reported to have said: “I should have carried New York by 10,000 votes if the weather had been clear and Dr. Burchard had been doing missionary work in Asia Minor or China.” Blaine’s great mistake had been not distancing himself from Burchard’s comments."
The Old Town of Eaton will be cerebrating its 229th year on Memorial Day Monday. The weekend follows a traditional cerebration held in the town each year, a town whose history is steeped in the time after the Revolutionary War.Settled by many veterans of the war and part of the original; settlement of Madison County, it prides itself with history remembered and its roots as Madison County’s first clearing.Once part of Chenango County it was separated off and boasts early settlement by families moving west to stake their claim of the new America’s western frontier.
But at this time of year and our usual Memorial Day Celebration, it always comes to mind that few people volunteer to help the hardworking few, who today take the time to try and improve their communities and to help keep them alive for future generations to enjoy.
The small towns in New York State's most rural areas have lost so much including stores, churches, schools, up-kept cemeteries and families to entertain even thoughts of the past. Here in Eaton we are trying to keep each of our little piece of the world together, but without the support of the community that is difficult, and without volunteers it is nearly impossible. So to our small group I say "thank You!"
Each year the museum has so many visitors trying to find information on their relative or ancestors, many can't understand what happened to a once booming area that now has so many homes in need of repair or so many empty houses. When we started the museum and the Neighbors for Historic Eaton it was in an effort to not only preserve the past but also to try and bring work for people to do.
I think the worst things that happened locally was the removal of the school to Morrisville, followed by the removal of the Infirmary to Morrisville. Preserving ties to things like these alone would have given the area glue to hold much together. Today kids ride a bus that comes earlier and travels farther with each school consolidation. Gone are the days of walking home with your friends talking about your dreams and your day. That has been replaced by expensive phones or internet which lets the world in to their lives with little control and with a cost $ to a poor family.
Because of explicit content movies and tv shows we can see the dark underbelly of society clearly with all of the "Shock Jocks" and mouthy promoters who use shock to gather attention. I would love for us to be unable to phone, to see tv, or to surf the thousands of stations available to us and to instead sit in the back yard and listen to nature as a daily routine.
For this years event the Old Town of Eaton Museum will be hosting a large yard sale on Memorial Day Weekend Saturday, May 25th and Sunday May 26th from 9 am until 3pm both days. As usual the set up will be at the Old Auction Barn building next to the Eaton Post Office on Rt. 26 in the Hamlet of Eaton.Though this years parade will be in Morrisville, the usual History Day Celebration will mark Eatons Memorial Day Monday the 27th. The museum will be open from 10 am until 3pm in honor of the communities 229th Anniversary.
The Yard Sale will feature everything from furniture to gifts, household small appliances, gift items, pet items, books, kitchen items, figurines and more. The proceeds will benefit the Old Town of Eaton Museum and the not for profit charity - 4 Community Cats.
The usual can drive to benefit both organizations will gladly take your holiday cans that can be dropped off at the weekend event, or left at 5823 Brooklyn Street, or given to one of our groups members.
The weekend will feature a special history display on one of our "Home Town" veterans of the Viet Nam War... Doug Chilson, with Back Street Mary at the Old Town of Eaton Museum talking about all our veterans. The Eaton Museum is located at 2776 River Road in Eaton, and on Monday she will be there to answer any of your questions or perhaps just take you on a tour of the historic old museum building. that dates to about 1802.
For more information by emailing Back Street Mary@yahoo.com.
By the late 1880’s a cry had raised up, from the northern, more populous part of the county, asking that the location of the courthouse be changed to the north. The main complaint was that travelers to the clerk’s office or the courts could not easily get to Morrisville by train. The train that passed through the town of Eaton, by-passed Morrisville, and travelers had to go over steep hills to get to the county buildings at Morrisville from Morrisville Station. Other complaints included a lack of adequate accommodations for visitors. This fight was the most divisive struggle in the history of Madison County lasting for almost 30 years. This struggle had a polarizing effect that is even evident in many ways today.
It is interesting to note that in 1893 a petition was passed by the people of Eaton Village to have the courthouse relocated there. Eaton had the rail stop and had many more amenities than Morrisville at the time. This was blocked by H. B. Conan who protested this move, using the fact that if the courthouse was moved the land would revert to the former owners, a fact that later effected the property when it was to become part of the state agricultural school.
The towns of Lenox and Oneida kept the fight going for more years through self-interest, each one wanting the county seat to be located in their towns. Petitions for removal stated that Morrisville was 2 ½ miles from the nearest rail terminal, that it was too expensive to pay mileage for jurors, that the jail was condemned by State authorities and that it took a whole day to reach Morrisville from any other point in the county.
The compromise was choosing the current courthouse’s location in Wampsville and the village was basically created (incorporated as a village on September 25, 1907) to hold the county seat. Wampsville was located on the main line of the New York Central and the West Shore Railroads where twenty-four trains stopped daily.
Finally on November 5, 1907 this issued was turned over to the voters and the county seat was changed from Morrisville to Wampsville by a margin of 756 votes. Of interest is that 10 of the 16 towns actually voted against this, the north winning because of its larger population.
The New Courthouse
The next step was acquiring the land in Wampsville to build on. It is here John Wesley Coe enters the picture. Coe had been the foreman of the Madison County Jury for 14 years and was one of the supporters of the relocation of the county seat to Wampsville. It is said that he was tired of his lengthy commute to Morrisville, especially in the winter season. Coe originally from Madison County, had become wealthy in the oil fields of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Coe returned to Madison County with that wealth, buying a 78 acre farm to retire on as a gentleman farmer. Coe had been partners in the oil fields with President James A. Garfield and remained a close friend until his death. Coe put up orchards on his property and later sold two strips of his property to two different railroad companies, which effected the decision to move to his lands.
Coe originally wanted to be paid for his prime parcel of land near the railroad, but later on February 12, 1908, he decided to deed the land to the county for just $1. When the county asked him for more land he sold the county land for the jail and let the county rent land for vegetable gardens. John Wesley Coe refused to sell his house however, stating that he “brought the house to live and to die in”, and that he did. This house later was purchased by the county and had to be removed to build new county facilities.
So on July 16, 1908 ground was broken for the start of a new Courthouse in the newly formed Village of Wampsville.
James Riley Gordon designer of the new Courthouse
The Madison County Courthouse in Wampsville was designed by the famous architect James Riely Gordon, who is also the architect of the Cortland County Courthouse. Gordon worked for a time for the Irving Corner Company of New York before moving to Texas. Texas, which has more courthouses than any other state (225) was a ripe field for Gordon, who is credited with building over 60 courthouses across the United States, 16 in Texas alone. If you go on line to http://www.waxahachiechamber.com you can learn about the construction of the Waxahachic courthouse that was described by James A. Michener in his book Texas.
Gordon’s style of architecture was considered Richardsonian Romanesque and among his most memorable building accomplishments was the Texas Building for the Columbian Exposition of 1897.
The history of settlement in many of our early
communities formed around lush rich soil, water bodies or old transportation
routes, in some cases around something as simple as mineral deposits like
“salt”.
In early times a salt source or spring was sought and early
settlers flocked to it to boil off water to gain a cup of the needed
mineral.Salt in colonial times was as
valuable as gold as a source of money or for trade. Salt as a trade-ware is
traced as early as 6050 BC. Salt is a
need mineral for man or animal…needed to dry meat and preserve fish, it was also needed to make many other components of life. From the history of salt in America we find
from “SALT WORKS”– History of Salt…..
“Salt motivated the American pioneers. The American Revolution had heroes
who were salt makers and part of the British strategy was to deny the American
rebels access to salt. Salt was on the mind of William Clark in the
groundbreaking Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific Northwest. The first
patent issued by the British crown to an American settler gave Samuel Winslow
of the Massachusetts Bay Colony the exclusive right for ten years to make salt
by his particular method. The Land Act of 1795 included a provision for salt
reservations (to prevent monopolies), as did an earlier treaty between the
Iroquois' Onondaga tribe and the state of New York. New York has always been
important in salt production.”
Yes the settlement of Central New York...our area… and so I decided to
give a presentation on June 20th at 7pm, at the Old Auction Barn in
Eaton, It will be a discussion of our early settlement and the importance of the salt
industry… something that in part created the need for Fort Stanwix to guard the
area known as the “Oneida Carry”.
History is in some ways is a road sign to the future. It seems
that as a historian you are continually seeing the current happenings in a
context of what has transpired in the past and then predicting what will happen
in the future.In every small town in
rural America we can see that past disappearing before our eyes.Sitting here at night writing I wonder if
perhaps there might be a rebirth of the rural small communities as more and more
people do business from home and seek out peaceful setting to escape to.
Here in Eaton we have the reservoirs and small lakes that in
the past filled with only summer people…but more and more of these “camps” are
becoming year round homes.As the
suburbs inch closer and our electric & Internet improve… I wonder if some
of these areas like Eaton might again revitalize again.It’s a wonderful thought isn’t it.!
Video of Memorial Day Monday at the Potters Field honoring our Veterans please view and enjoy!.
What a week! The weather has been nasty this weekend with wind chills in the minus range. So once again stuck indoors I decided to catch up on some history.
Since so many have thanked me for information on the Old Madison County Home I thought I would add more to the story...
The original site of the Home was a stone farm with many stone buildings including a stone hop house. These structure probably pre-dated the 1806 Madison County forming. The picture below in color is the "Home" made up of three sections that were joined. Behind the building were two story outhouses.... The brick building that is still standing today was built after a fire...story below!
FIRE
It is on
October 23, 1913 that the next chapter in the “Poor House Story” begins. One of
the Curtis girls, who was musically inclined, left the building early as she
often did to teach a music lesson. Once outside, she noticed that the building
was on fire. She ran into the building and alerted those on duty and rang the
bell sounding a call of alarm to the sleepy village above.
Though helped
arrived from every corner of the county, the building turned into a raging inferno
and burned to the ground. The pictures that we have of the “Home” at this time
are directly related to the quick thinking effort of one of the help that threw
her trunk of belongings out a window and who
called for someone to come and take it. Other than that “All was lost.”
From Mrs.
Partridges booklet on the Infirmary dated 1878-1979:
“Although
it was never proved the fire was thought to have started in the lavatory of the
men’s dorm in the wiring. A few days earlier electricians had been making
repairs there.
One elderly
resident reported having seen blue smoke there behind some of the plumbing but
was not aware he should report it.”
The fire
actually caught the roofs of a number of town homes ablaze.
It is
recorded that men were housed in an adjacent building while the sick, women and
children were put up in homes in Eaton Village until the building was
completed.
All in the
community helped to keep the many people involved in this terrible tragedy safe
and cared for.
The Alms
House fire of 1913 and the death of S. Allen Curtis left an amazingly large job
for the next superintendent of the poor. After Curtis’ death, Lew Burden was
doing the superintendent’s job.
After the
fire, however, Republicans were pushing heavily to have Lewis Close of Lebanon
made his successor. (An interesting note: George Lathrop who had been S. Allen
Curtis,’ assistant and he married one of Curtis daughters.)
The new
“home” was to be made of brick and arrangements were made to start the project
immediately as the former and new inmates were being housed all over the
village and in temporary quarters on the grounds. The new project was to be
completed in two years, and it was!
One if the still standing early stone structures in Eaton New York, now empty!
Well I have been under the weather this week...really. Thanks to some good people I have warm wood and have decided to rest.... So thought I would post this as my blog for the week. It was on another blog spot that I started and stopped and so a few of you have seen it..but still if you need a smile perhaps this will give it to you...its about my good friend Bernie. (A Remembrance)
Bernie was born and raised in Eaton and moved back to Eaton after his mother’s death. Bernie became an experience and a friend and a person you could tell a hundred stories about. As a matter of fact there are so many stories about Bernie and when he grew up in Eaton that they could fill a book on their own. Bernie had a metal plate in his head and had an arm that had been deformed because of an injury. These injuries were caused by one of Bernie’s wild escapades as a boy. But his disabilities never held him down...in his day he soldered intricate silver scrolling on Oneida Silversmith pieces.
In the days of Bernie’s youth, Walt, his father, and many of the men in town worked for the Milk Plant up on one of the hills overlooking the village. The hill, even to this day, is one of the steepest hills, with an unbelievably steep drop into town. The Eaton Train Station was located on it, and when the first trains came to Eaton Village, it was said that they had made the longest steepest sustained grade ever built east of the Rocky Mountains. The town’s parents forbade the children to ride their bikes down the hill, but, of course, that would not stop Bernie.
On this particular morning the boys set out with the lunch pails for the milk station as usual, but after delivering their cargo Bernie decided to take the breath-taking daredevil ride to town. The boys gasped as they watch Bernie go swooshing down the hill. Just then a car crossed the intersection at the foot of the hill, and Bernie slammed into it. The terror that gripped the boys made them slip off and watch the goings on from the safety of some bushes. The tears flowed and their little bodies shook as after a while, Bernie’s motionless body was put into a hearse that sped away.
I met one of the boys, now an elderly man, one day when I was working in town, and he said he had run home and hid in his bedroom. He was terrified that his mother would find out he was with Bernie, and he knew for sure it would get him into trouble. He thought that the overwhelming sadness and shock of losing his good friend was too much for his young heart to take.
The story behind the story was that the town’s undertaker was playing cards in the gas station, once a pleasant pastime in that era. The gas station was at the foot of the hill where the accident took place, and the men, seeing the horrible accident, removed a body from the hearse which the undertaker had parked to play cards, locked the body in the gas station bay, put Bernie into the hearse and beat a fast track to the Utica Hospital, a ride that saved Bernie’s life.
Another time Bernie and one of his friends crawled through the window of the old furniture shop on River Road that made coffins for the Madison County Poor House, which was located a short distance away. They stole one of the coffin bottoms and took it for a ride on the old pond out behind the buildings, enjoying a sail and playing pirates!
The stories go on forever, and one I can contribute myself. When Bernie became ill and couldn’t drive, I would volunteer to take him to the doctor in Oneida. Nick-named “Back Roads Bernie” for a reason, he would make me take this road or that so he could show me this person’s farm, or where he did this or that, basically filling me in with history tidbits, I guess. On the way back, he would ask me to stop at the Munnsville Legion. Since his appointments were early in the morning, our stop at the Legion would be at about 9:30 am. This tradition of course was not unusual for a farm area, but was for most people like myself. He would say, “This is Back Street Mary, the writer”, everyone would nod and tell me some history tidbit, I would have a beer on Bernie, and then everyone would buy me a beer, which I didn’t drink, so I was given wooden beer chips to use in the future.
One time I could not take Bernie to Oneida and asked my housemate Chris to do it. She agreed to do it and asked Bernie what time she should pick him up. Chris didn’t know better and so took him straight to Oneida. He looked at her and said, “how come we’re so early; my appointment isn’t for another 45 minutes?”
Later that night I saw Chris. She told me what happened and asked if he had ever asked me to stop for a beer at 9 in the morning. I replied “yes”. I opened the drawer under the kitchen counter revealing a large number of wooden beer chips and said, “Where do you think all of these came from?”
Bernie was loved by all and regardless of what was wrong...he made me laugh!
