Thoughts on Community and Eaton's Day!

Memorial Day Monday is once again calling you to come to Eaton and help support the Old Town of Eaton Museum.  

Each year through pies and goodies the museum manages to bring the history of the area to the public and to preserve the artifacts that have been handed down over the past 220 years plus.  Some of our artifact gems date to 1797 and Eaton’s earliest settlers.

Until you get older you never realize how important a role the small town you were born in has played and how it shaped your life.  In actuality it is part of your family because in many cases your parent or grandparents may have come from the town as well.

In Eaton many of the founding families are still here, names that still fill classrooms, societies and eventually come home to rest in our local cemeteries.  History and our American root system are what hold us together as a people, and hold our tree of Democracy upright.

On Memorial Day we celebrate our many veteran’s who served with honor to protect that Democracy.  Eaton the Town and Hamlets were founded by soldiers who served in the Revolutionary War. Here in our cemeteries every war is represented a grim succession of graves.

Community Spirit has made us what we are so we the “Keepers of the Fire” for the community… known as the Friends of the Eaton Museum… invite you and your family to come to Eaton on Memorial Day Monday. We ask you to pick up a bake good, a history book, a garage sale item, a hot dog or a drink and contribute to the Old Town of Eaton Museum.  These donations also pay for this event each year.

This will also give you the opportunity to visit over refreshments with neighbors and relatives… some not seen over winter’s long drudge.  You will also be helping keep open an 1806 stone building that houses the “Past for the Future”. It is nice to remember that memories are still a part of our “Reveries” whether we are young or old!

The event runs from 9 am until 3 pm…the museum will be open from 1 pm until 3 pm and the location is the Old Auction Barn next to the Post Office on Route 26 in Eaton a road once called the “old Skaneateles turnpike”.

Watch the videos below and see some of your relatives and friends or maybe even you much younger....and  remember the many who are gone.

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!