Eaton and Thanksgiving History!

                                                 Kitchen in the Morse House in Early Thanksgivings! 

We have been getting ready for our Colonial Holiday Celebration of Thanksgiving  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.

So Happy Thanksgiving ... and pass on this bit of history!

Some History on the Families of Eaton, Pilgrims, & Fall Festival.

The Fall is coming on us quickly, and while getting ready stacking wood and thinking of our next museum event, " Fall Festival History Weekend" followed by our November Pie Sale...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 first weekend in October and will close for the season at the end of the month.

The Morse House today and before!

More History on the "Old Madison County Home" a highly rated facility in its day!

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!