You can make a Difference...WRITE LADIES

I ran across this old blog I wrote in 2014 about women writers and the impact they made on our history. With all that is happening now and knowing history always repeats itself...I thought I would post this and ask those who can to write about things today...to write..you can change things for the better and might become famous as well.

Most interesting to me is when a visitor to the old stone museum who  actually knows 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!

The Memories, with thoughts of History, Community & the Future!

Today here in Eaton we say Eaton Day or “History Day” as we originally called it and celebrate it on Memorial Day, but for many years it followed the tradition of a “community day” every year on the 4^th of July.  Today of course, Hamilton has stolen the 4^th as their big day… but in the past it was Eaton’s Day and people came for miles to strut their stuff and catch up with the community and it people.

In those days the event even included horse racing at breakneck speeds through town and across.  The local stable was a noted hang out to “star” horses and one of its ‘overnight” guests was the incredible horse Dan Patch.  Flora Temple once graced the small paddock on what was then the Hamilton Skaneateles Turnpike, a road whose cost the Morse family of Eaton half paid for in 1811.

The Eaton Band and the Military Band beat the drums and blared martial music as the merchants (then many) put out their wares. The bandstand was located next to the place we hold Eaton Day each year on what was then the Skaneateles Turnpike today’s route 26.   The spot we set up is actually the spot where Samuel Chubbuck invented the key and sounder for SFB Morse’s Telegraph!  It is his equipment that sent the first message. Chubbuck’s father was noted for running a hotel and more than one Tavern.

The ladies aid put on supers and the lunch business thrived.  A dance and suppers were often held in the Masonic Hall, a building that is dilapidated today but still standing in town with a roof that once extended over gas pumps.

 The ladies of the churches put on meals for visitors… and their famous preachers including Grover Cleveland’s brother, and Nathaniel Kendrick… would have tried to tone down the activities. One of Eaton’s historic churches still stands with its historical marker out front. Families of the Churches would have included the famous missionaries to be, Emily Chubbuck Judson, Jonathan Wade, Andrew Bigelow Morse, and more.

Wood. Taber & Morse's new Steam Engines would be there in front of the factory...all shined up ready to impress, Melville Landon "Eli Perkins" might be up from New York or Washington to summer and relatives from far and near would return to enjoy the community they sprung from.

Gone is Davenports Store that was noted for its wares and for its owners who were loved by the population and were successful for many years.  That store is still standing is now a residence with its large white pillars on the side…. not in the front!

Paddy Miles firing not a cannon but his anvil for many years jolted the town awake.  Yes, an Anvil…. that had a hole in it where black powder was poured and a fuse lit.  Today we have Jim Monahan and his cannon crew who dress in Revolutionary War era costume and fire a real cannon on occasion.  This tradition being brought down since the majority of founding fathers served in the Revolution.

And for the holiday itself, the Eaton Cemetery is spruced up and over 200 flags grace the graves of men and women who served their country in all conflicts of the past including some that were at Bunker Hill, Lexington and Concord.

Old times and memories to be sure, but pieces of history that should be celebrated, and people who should be honored for their service in this the 221^st year of the community.  In order to protect their history and the artifacts that remain… we the Friends of the Old Town of Eaton Museum... beg you to come out and enjoy the day. Talk to each other, eat, get involved in the raffles, bake sale, white elephant sale… join the "Friends" and support a museum that preserves the history of the area and the “Community.”

Future generations will thank you for it!

Old Town of Eaton Museum

History, Eaton... What has changed in our World & not for the better I fear!

The history of Eaton Village and the Town of Eaton have continued now for 220 years, in a way it is just a pebble in the sand of time.

Old History book and the new!

The horses and the wagons that carried people to this once a wilderness, have disappeared and in their place have sprung up horse facilities and horse farms of all variety…but these for more pleasant enterprises than hauling people and their belongings up the steep old trails.

The hills that surround the town are still steep but huge tractor-trailers wiz over them with little thought of the heavily burdened ox carts that once served the same purpose.  The wood fires are still burning yet coal, wood pellets, and oil have overtaken their importance.

The memories of the town’s famous inhabitants have now faded, and the young do not have to time to remember their wonderful historic roots.  It seems it is not until they reach the age of retirement that they are suddenly filled with the nostalgia needed and the wish to find out about their past genealogy.

The cell phone and Internet have brought the outside world to a place where young Samuel Chubbuck stood testing and developing the pony key and sounder for S B Morse’s telegraph, an invention that would change the way news was transmitted across the world in the 1800’s.

Gone is the factory of Wood, Taber and Morse who developed four-wheel drive equipment that we think little of today as we watch huge John Deere’s plowing the fields using the sisters of the first 4-driver traction engines they developed.

The church is still standing and open… seeming to follow the historic past, but all the many denominations have spread out of the small villages and into the surrounding area, where stood three now stands one.  Famous preachers are now replaced with musical groups who tour to raise spirits in the ever more connected and depressing world.

Missionaries like the Deans, Emily Judson, and the Wades have faded... but some still go out via the local churches as missions, but it is not the same.

The promise of gas lights and heat at a cheap rate has gone away, though today there are more gas heads and gas lines crossing the town than ever before… yet no gas is delivered to a majority of its rural population.

Cows are really no longer family with pictures and names that are revered…now they are part of a mechanical business we call production.  Herds that once roamed free have expanded to hundreds in barns feeding and milking,  many  - three times a day.

Children can no longer walk to school and return home with lunch pails in hand talking about their day to their friends along the way.  Local education that was the pride and care of the community has disappeared… replaced by central schools and huge buses that runaround the town mostly empty… back and forth, back and forth.

Yes things have changed, we now drive miles to stores rather than walk “over town” to shop locally. We spend our money at institutions run by millionaires and foreign countries rather than keep our money local helping the butcher, baker and candlestick maker.

Doctors no longer make house calls and you can’t stop at Mrs. Chase’s for a remedy or liquid cure…now we now have specialists and travel to big complexes in Syracuse. Our children leave for college and a better way of life to never return in many cases…but sometimes I wonder… are we really better off in the modern world?  Only history will tell.

For a piece of history you can purchase the new Eaton History Book at Dougherty's Pharmacy in Morrisville...

small town fun.....

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!

Morse's Telegraph, Samuel Chubbuck, Emily Chubbuck, Eaton, and Memorial Day Monday...Eaton Day!

Early Sounder

You know history does march to a different drummer in Eaton.  I live here and marvel at the fact that on every corner of the Hamlet... once called “Eaton Village”… history lived.

The very spot where we will be hosting part of our event on Memorial Day Monday - Eaton Day…serving up an Ice Cream Social, Bake Goods, Book Sale etc.…is one of the town’s historic places…a place  of national importance actually…for it is the site of the birth of the Camelback Key and Sounder for Morse’s telegraph!  Yup.. in old Eaton, New York.

If you go behind the old auction barn building you will find the spot where Samuel W. Chubbuck did all his experiments … a place that was his father’s Mechanic Shop.  Samuel Chubbuck and his family moved to Eaton, then called Log City, very early and his son Samuel it was said could fix anything.

Samuel eventually became noted for his many ideas, which include not only telegraph equipment but also the modern battery post used in our cars, lift bridges, and so much more.  If an idea came to him in a dream he took no patent on it as he believed in came from God.

His camelback key is actually patented to his cousin Charles Chubbuck?  I have always wondered if he gave it to Emily Chubbuck’s father to give him some income… (His family was very poor.) Oh yes did I mention Emily Chubbuck Judson…the missionary known also as the famous writer “Fanny Forrester”… was his cousin. And yes, the brook that wanders behind Samuel’s work spot is the brook that she made famous in her “Alderbrook Tales!”

Anyway Samuel went on to become a very famous and rich man who gave lectures all over the USA as Professor Chubbuck.  It is interesting to note that one of the men he influenced with his theories on “electricity” who gave him credit was Thomas Alvah Edison.  Chubbuck’s company made all of the early equipment for Morse’s Telegraph…something that modernized news and communication.

A humorous piece on his family is noted in Luna Hammond’s history of Madison County:

“After the Skaneateles turnpike went through, there was need of better tavern accommodations; Mr. Samuel Stow, therefore, built and kept a tavern on the corner opposite the lower hotel. Samuel Chubbuck, living opposite to him, carried on a blacksmith shop. These two men had by some disagreement become violently opposed to each other. In a spirit of competition, Mr. Chubbuck was a staunch Democrat, and this was a time soon after the war of 1812; so upon one side of his attractive sign board was displayed the dying words of Commodore Lawrence, as a motto, --- "Don't give up the Ship!" --- and on the other side, "Free Trade and Sailor's Rights!" Mr. Stow immediately erected another blacksmith shop to match Chubbuck's, which stood very near where Coman's store is, and swung out his sign directly opposite to Chubbuck bearing these words: "Don't give up the Shop!" and on the reverse side, "Free Trade and Mechanic's Rights!" --- alluding to his neighbor's giving up blacksmithing for tavern keeping. Those unique signs hung out for many a year. “

****So come out to Eaton Day on Memorial Day Monday…visit the Old Town of Eaton Museum and enjoy the front street (Rt. 26) activities and savor history!

PS   If you didn’t ever hear of this piece…it was because S F B Morse was and ego-maniac and took credit for everything he could!

Some old style equipment