Changes...Fall and Fall Festival ...are soon to be on us!

The Fall is coming on us quickly, and while getting ready stacking wood and thinking of our next museum event, " Fall Festival History Weekend...I dug this up and thought you might enjoy reading it again!

Many of our original settlers in Eaton date back to the Mayflower and the settlers of Natick especially the Morse, Leland, Kent and Stowe families.  Eaton followed much of the tradition of Natick so I thought I would include some wonderful history on Thanksgiving and Governor Bradford who Grandma Clark was a direct relative of. 

  The first Thanksgiving was truly different from what we see portrayed today on TV and in the movies.  In actuality, the Pilgrims who had invited the Indians over to thank them for their help in cultivating corn, in fishing and in hunting, and for basically keeping them alive for the first year, were stunned when the Indians arrived for the feast in numbers far beyond what the Pilgrim’s could feed.  So, the Indians left and hunted for deer and fowl and returned with the food necessary for the feast to last three days…yes, three days.

     This occasion was unusually frivolous for the stern Pilgrims and comprised of continuous eating, the marching of Myles Standish’s little band of soldiers, bow and arrow competition etc…  The feast meanwhile was tended to by five of the eighteen women who survived the first terrible winter.  Imagine trying to fix a feast for 140-150 people over an open fire, and then stretch it to three days.

     The great Governor Bradford delivered this prayer on the first Thanksgiving and I thought I would include it for us:

     Oh give thanks unto the Lord; sing unto him; sing praises unto him, for the precious things of heaven for the dew, and for the deep that couches beneath, and for the precious fruits brought forth from the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the moon, and for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the everlasting hills, and for the precious things of the earth and its fullness.  Let everything that has breath praise the Lord, Praise ye the Lord.

     Of interest, I think, are a number of passages from “Of Plimouth Plantation” by Governor Bradford, which mention the colony’s success only by acts of what he referred to as “God’s divine providence”.

     Bradford mentions windfalls of corn from unexpected quarters, a mysterious voice that warned the colonials of a store-house fire, showers that came just in time to save the crops, even the turning back of a ship that would foreclose on the colony.  These quotes show the success of the colony having been squarely laid on the cornerstone of faith.

     This faith led Bradford to guide the colony through all of its terrible trials and gave him the moral capacity to do what was right for all without wish for personal gain.  From his first election in 1622 until 1639, he received nothing for dining the court during their monthly sessions.  One comment I received after the piece on the “Common Good” read “too bad things could not be like that today!”  To this I say, “Amen!”  The word “altruism” is too seldom used to describe our modern leaders.

     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, something we need to concentrate on today I think.

 Fall Festival will be the later in October -  21 & 22 this year our little museum in its 25 year will close for the season at the end of the month. For those days the museum will host a special display on the Chenango Canal with Backstreet Mary on hand give a small talk on the Canal and Eaton's industries which made Peck's Post in Eaton, the Canal's busiest port. 

Put your sound on and listen to and oldie and a fall favorite from a past Fall History Weekend theme!

Fall Festival History Weekend and the Fall & Thanksgiving Season coming up!

Our Fall Festival History Weekend is coming up on Oct the 6th and 7th.  The weekend will close out the Museum season, a season that has been filled with events this year.  

On Saturday we will have a Garage Sale with crafts and bake goods at the Old Auction Barn on Main Street and at 1 pm Back Street Mary will give a Cemetery Tour in the Historic Eaton Cemetery. 

On the Sunday we will have the museum open for the last day and will have lectures at 1  pm at the Auction Barn on Land Marks including Brown's Hall in Georgetown and the famous Morse House in Eaton. We will have a Guest Speaker on the Georgetown landmark and of course, Back Street Mary on Eaton. The lectures are scheduled from 1 to 3pm.  Of course we will be having our fund drive Thanksgiving Pie sale on the Saturday before Thanksgiving

The date of May 26, 1637, a mere 17 years after the settlement of Plymouth, the tensions between the Puritans and the Native Americans had become strained.  The very people who they stole the corn from on their landing and who showed them how to plant corn and other crops. as well as how to fish and hunt, were being exterminated by the English and Puritans who had now flocked to the shores of New England. 

The most militant of the Native tribes the Pequot has started warring against the white settlers who were pushing them off of their land.  So Militia and English troops set up and ambush on May 26, 1637.  The surrounded the Pequot settlement and using surprise burned the native fort to the ground.  The women, children, sick and elderly hid in their teepees and thus were burned alive.

Governor Bradford is quoted as saying: “It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink there of: but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise there of to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands and give them such a speedy victory!’

The history Channel named this as one of the 10 days that unexpectedly changed history, for the attitude of removal or cleansing would be our policy.  We regarded all those Native Americans who would not become civilized - near white as Devils who must be killed or driven out.

The Wampanoag’s and their famous Chief Massasoit, who were friends with Bradford and the Plymouth settlement, began to complain about the white settlers freely taking the crops and invading their land. In 1622 a militia Captain killed 8 friendly natives and impaled their sachem’s head on a pole in Plymouth.  Hostilities had begun and as the colony encroached more and more on their land, New England became a battleground.  The Wampanoag’s thought they could coexist with the whites but by the 1670’s Massasoit’s grandson Metacom, known to the English as King Phillip, began what would become known as King Phillip’s War. 

Metacom noted that The Wampanoag “had bine the first in doing good to the English and the English the first in doing rong.”

Metacom claimed that phony contracts were used to take large tracts of land from Indians who had been made drunk.

When a praying Indian who helped set up the Praying Indian Village of Natick was found murdered, three of Metacom’s followers were accused, found guilty and executed.  King Philips war was on…settlements, major towns and villages were burned and sacked until finally on August 12, 1676 he was killed…thus ending the King Phillip’s War. 

*It is noted that in Plymouth for that Thanksgiving they bought his head back and paraded it around town.  They Puritans thought it a sign from God of their righteous ownership of this new land...they the chosen people!

* Today Natick has a National Day of Mourning instead of Thanksgiving.  A monument was placed marking the genocide that took place at 
that time!

I am Quitting, Eaton History & Museum, and the Keepers of the Fire and you!

This week’s blog is about quitting…yes quitting.  I am a person who never gives up…really!  I started the quest to help Eaton get a business since 1995.  The only thing Eaton the Town and Hamlet had going for them at that time was “History”. So the little group called Neighbors for Historic Eaton… that has morphed into Old Town Folks today… set out to use that history as a vehicle to gain recognition and to put Eaton into the public eye. We have certainly accomplished that and now have a museum that works to that end.

I started doing Fall Festival History Weekends to bring not only Eaton’s History to the public, but also all of the small town museums that have been overlooked.  To accomplish this I put up an early website called Our Old Town.  We did 8 years of these fall history tours.  Today I have expanded this to include the history of upstate New York with our current website www.historystarproductions.com.

As Madison county Historian I worked to save the records that had been long since forgotten and abused.  Records that record the lives of the people of Madison County.  I have a hard time getting people to visualize that a county is not a drawing on a piece of paper but is people…the people that live within it…both past and present.  In that capacity I tried to save the Madison County Fair…donating my time and much of my own money.  We have a Fair today.

I have written so many articles in the past 20 years on our shared history, so many weekly blogs, books, and in all this time have never been paid for any of it and almost never thanked either.

I have toured to promote each of these quests…doing public speaking engagements, 31 in one year alone for the Fair.  I have done numerous public speaking lectures to raise money for my museum…but I have to stop.  Of all the things I do…public speaking is the thing I hate the most.  This month I am retiring…really.  I am giving the Eaton Cemetery tour on the 31^st…yes Halloween…and that is it.

The museum will still be there, the history will still be in the public’s eye.. but I won’t be.  After 20 years I am turning the job of promoting our cultural heritage in the form of history back to you.  I implore you to support your local museums; …mark your memories by labeling photographs and donating important pieces of your communities’ history to your local society or museum…do not wait for it to be sold at auction to cover your debts.  Also remember that your children my not prize that memorabilia as you do. Volunteer with a group that works for your community such as fire departments, churches, cemetery association, and museum groups…etc.

Remember…each town, village, and hamlet needs what I call “Keeper’s of the Fire”.  In the old days whole groups of people traveled together to market with their goods…. travel that took in their time days by ox cart…they always left a few folks home who kept the home fires burning until their return.  So I ask you to become a modern keeper, by preserving and promoting the history (remembered lives) that founded our rural America, the future generations will be richer because of it!