More History to Share -

Since stuck indoors or home I decided to spread some stories on some history for all to enjoy!Pass these on to young or old and educate and enjoy!

Since so many have thanked me for information on the Old Madison County Home I thought I would add more to the story... Since this was one of the most serious health disasters to hit Eaton, a place that had to take people in during the Flu epidemic, this is pertinent!

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! 

Help Celebrate our New Addition!

Our new museum building makes me and my hardworking little crew happy.  We are almost done, only things left are getting the word out and a few final touchups, and so a dream of getting our 501 3c and apspling for grants has paid off. So I ask you to tell everyone you know who is interested in history about our opening.
 So....
The Friends of the Old Town of Eaton Museum invite the public to join them for the Grand Opening of their new Agricultural Mini - Museum, located on the grounds of the Old Town of Eaton Museum at 2776 River Road in Eaton.  The new building was made possible by a grant from the Mid-York Foundation and members of Old Town Folks Inc.  

The date is Saturday and Sunday September 28 and 29, which is traditional Fall Festival History Weekend held each fall.  The hours will be from 11 until 4 both days with sales of gifts and bake goods to benefit the museum. 

The new building features the history of Eaton’s many businesses including Moses Cronk, Wood, Taber & More Steam Engine Works,  Sheffield Diary that became Sealtest, with a special feature on the first Holstein - Friesian breeding herd of  cattle to come to The United States, and much more.  

The building will have a built in tour via a video & talk given by former Madison County Historian Back Street Mary Messere.  Messere also will be there  selling copies of her many books, and of course be on hand to answer your history questions.

Messere who acts as the museums curator, notes that this is a dream come true for the small group. Messere won an award from  Museumwise for her putting on of 8 Fall Festival History Weekends that spanned 3  counties and banded small and large museums together to be open for free on the same day in the fall. This allowed people to learn history and visit those little museums that seem to be never open.  

For more information visit the museums facebook page at Old Town of Eaton Museum or on the web at www.historystarproduction.com.

The Museum, World War I, Peace, Starvation and the Maria Dolens!

History is a mystifying seductress to some of us.  Everywhere we look we find a piece of history that we are curious about.  Myself  I am continually looking into the history of everything and many times finding that I know very little of the history of things at all..

Every year we all set goals for the next and this morning as  I am sitting drinking a cup of coffee I am doing just that, I have struggled, poured much energy and money into keeping the museum open and with this year's pie sale that was pulled off with a struggle and made a success in part on
Sunday sales... with local support, the question that came to my mind was,...”should I continue after more than 20 years?”  

I thought about the new year as most of us do and I tried to find something that would guide me.  I asked myself if you didn’t work on the museum...what would you do?  The answers were pretty simple since I try to do them now… 1. Help wipe out poverty!  2. Work to end all War and Hatred..

I am adamant that we are in a terrible time of class separation, I remember a line from a song…”The hands of the have not’s have fallen out of reach!”  They have and are becoming more so everyday...even though we are in the middle of a supposed boom economy here in the USA. We are also in a time of world war, causing starvation of millions and skirmishes that are killing thousands of innocent people...and for what....Religion and Power....Riches?

So with the recent celebration of the 100th Anniversary of WWI..."The War to end all Wars" I went online to find out what  has been said in the past...   Pope Francis...who signs everything just Francis…in his  New Years message a few years ago for the 48th anniversary of the Day of World Peace spoke in front of a screen that had the Maria Dolens bell ringing in the background.  The Maria Dolens? And so I was off on my newest history quest.

The Maria Dolens is the name of a bell that was cast from the bronze of many of the cannons - 19, one from each of the countries that participated in WWI.  It sits in Roverto, in today’s northern Italy and it rings 100 times each day in the evening to honor the fallen and to many to act  as a symbol for peace and an end to war.

The Bell was the idea of Don Antonio Rossaro,  called the Bell of the Fallen.  It was given the name Maria Dolens and placed on the Malipiero tower of Castello di Rovereto.  It has been recast many times because of fractures from ringing 100 times a day no doubt... but it has always been recast and returned to the tower where is nightly reminds the world of the price of war.  The latest recast was blessed by Pope Paul VI and on November 4^th, 1965 was placed on the Colle di Miravalle where it today rest above the city of Roverto.

On the bell, which is the second largest swinging bell in the world, were added at its recasting the statements of the Pontiff Pius XII "With peace nothing is lost. Everything is to be lost through war." John XXIII: "In pace hominum ordinata concordia et tranquilla libertas."

Today, as always, it rang 100 times at midday...in Italy as I am writing this..... just as it  was shown on the large screen in St. Peter’s square that day.

It is said that it tolls in the hope that Man, in the memory of the Fallen of every war and every nation in the world, may find the path that leads to Peace….

I say AMEN to that…!

Thanksgiving Pie Sale, World War I and Veteran's Day!

Winters cold has settled in for a bit with snow crystals making their debut this fall…strange how it seems to be imitating the World’s mood right now. Paris and all in Europe are celebrating Armistice Day, this year marking the 100th Anniversary of the end of the war touted as the "War to End All Wars", here we celebrate Veteran's Day. Many wars have come and gone since then, others still go on.

Meanwhile the radios are already blasting Christmas music and the stores have pushed their Christmas sales up to accommodate a crazy group of people who actually leave their family and Thanksgiving celebrations to haunt malls for deals on a day dubbed “Black Friday”... I am pretty sure the clerks that have to work aren’t happy or giving thanks for them.

When I was in retailing we were closed on Sunday and Holidays…CLOSED! 

Today we take for granted the ability to shop until we drop…but really should we?  I actually wonder if we ever as a collective society think about how lucky and wealthy we are.  By world standards even the poorest of poor here in the USA are better off than much of the world’s people.  

Our “Capitalistic society” has dropped most people into debt and into a stressful world of acquiring items we do not need and also forcing many to live up to the standards set by advertisers and by our neighbors who have this or that that is new and shiny.

So for this “Thanksgiving” I offer a suggestion.  For at least one minute of our day let us sit and reflect on the World, on our life, on our loved ones and above all on how lucky we are.  We have come along way from that first Thanksgiving day…but I fear we have long way to go until we can understand that for many just having a family that is alive, having some food of any variety to eat, having a roof over their head and some warmth, and having their health, is all that they need to be happy. Truthfully it should be enough for all of us.

Happiness is a simple thing that cannot be bought, cannot be acquired in a mall, but it can be shared and enjoyed in our hearts. So share the happiness you have with your loved ones and friends…sharing and caring in this cold world will make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside… but only if you are thankful for what you have.

PS Support your local community and if in our area come to our Eaton Museum Pie and Bake Sale on November 17th, to be old Auction Barn on Rt. 26 in Eaton..9 - 4pm....tons of pies and bake goods for a good cause... the Old Town of Eaton Museum.

Thanksgiving, Democracy, some of its Roots & Pie!

We have been getting ready for our Colonial Holiday Celebration 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 the
Pilgrim’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.

Just a Reminder the Thanksgiving Pie Sale is on Saturday, Nov. 17th from 9 - 4 pm at the Old Auction Barn on Rt. 26.  Come down and support the Museum and pick up a pie or two for company!

This museum junkie does Eaton's Churches....at the Old Town of Eaton Museum

I have been working non-stop on the Eaton Museum for weeks and finally have gotten to setting up the displays....finally.  I had begun to drag under the load of getting the museum repaired and painted and then.... two friends picked me up and we toured two museum....I am energized...now perhaps I can have some fun!

So today I started the Eaton Churches corner and realized what an unbelievable history old Eaton has. Most people do not realize that two of the original incorporators of the Eaton Congregational Church were also 2 of the 5 original incorporators of the Baptist Theological Seminary that became Madison University and then Colgate.  As a matter of fact the Eaton Baptist Minister at that time became the first President of Madison University!

Not impressive enough..well the first graduate of the school was Missionary Jonathan Wade of Eaton, Eaton also was the home of Andrew Bigelow Morse an American youth missionary to Burma, also it is cool that the Rev. William Dean - missionary to China, is currently being recognized for his missionary work there.  Eaton's Emily Chubbuck "Fanny Forester"married America's famous missionary Adoniram Judson and returned to Burma with him as a missionary!

In its "hay-day" Eaton had 3 churches with a population of about 450.  These churches remained in the community even though they became "Federated"as church going declined....

Eventually, the 2nd Baptist Church was sold and torn down by Arthur Yale, a postman.  Industrious to the cored he used the building to build three cottages on the Bradley Brook....I have a copy of one of the cottages using the wood, roofing, and pews from the church in the museum.

The Methodist Church is gone..tho many thought it to be the prettiest..and the the only building standing is the Congregational ...now the Eaton Community Bible Church..and what a history that has.

It was from that church in 1848 the Congregational Society of the Northeast met and declared their abolition stanza.  It's famous members included all of the the Wood, Taber and Morse Company, as well as the Landon Family whose son Melville made it famous in his book "Saratoga in 1901", and also included in its many pastors was Rev. William Cleveland.. the President's brother.

Today with in the structure is a rare Meneely clock built by Andrew himself and a world class Meneley Bell...something the Meneely Company keeps check on....so do I!

So if you get a chance visit me when we get the museum finished....and view an interesting piece of not only Eaton's history but the history of Madison County.  For more history and videos go to www.historystarproductions.com.

Take a tour.....